
Class _JdV^2JA 
Book 



OopigfrtN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




"W. T. BI7XDICK. 



BUNDICK'S 

LECTURES 


BY 

W. T. BUNDICK 

Onancock, Va. 


CINCINNATI : 

PEESS OF JENNINGS & GRAHAM. 






^o JS04 

- 



it* 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 
*"W. T. BUNDIOK. 



A SHOET BIOGEAPHY. 



William T. Bundick was born near Lo- 
cust Mount, Accomack County, Virginia, Feb- 
ruary 15, 1847. His early boyhood was 
passed upon the farm, in sight of the Atlantic 
Ocean. All the hardy sports of boating, fish- 
ing, and shooting, known to boys living along 
the ocean shore, were enjoyed by him during 
the intervals of rest incident to farm life on 
the peninsula known as the "Eastern Shore' ' 
of Virginia. While a small boy not more 
than ten years old his fondness for public 
speaking was manifest. He often collected 
his little play-fellows Sunday afternoons, and 
going to the pine woods near his home he 
would mount a stump, and entertain them by 
preaching to them. His chances for an edu- 
cation were those of an old field school in the 

1 



Bundick's Lectures. 

neighborhood. His early manhood was given 
to helping his father on the farm, and read- 
ing as his means permitted investment in 
books. After leaving the farm, he conducted 
for several years the steam saw-mill busi- 
ness, then being developed in his section of 
the State. Later he moved to the town of 
Onancock, and entered the mercantile busi- 
ness, which he pursued until, through the per- 
suasion of his friends, he took the platform 
as a State temperance lecturer. In his work, 
in an amazingly short period, he won national 
fame as a conservative advocate of the sub- 
ject of temperance. Mr. Bundick is a born 
platform genius, and possesses the power of 
making friends for the cause of temperance, 
even where influences are most antagonistic. 
He married Miss Kate S. Ames, of Acco- 
mack County, and has raised a family of four 
children. He was converted April 22, 1894, 
and connected himself with the Church. 
Since that time he has toured sixteen States 
and the District of Columbia, lectured in over 
2,755 churches, been indorsed by 1,450 promi- 

2 



A Short Biography. 

nent ministers, and received more than 800 
complimentary press notices in different 
parts of America. His lectures on ' ' Personal 
Kesponsibility, ' ' "The Blot on Our Civiliza- 
tion,' ' "Old Theoricus," "American Citizen- 
ship," "The Inquest,' ' and "Belshazzar's 
Feast ' ' are gems of their kind, and are char- 
acteristic of the strong yet temperance utter- 
ances of one of America's greatest temper- 
ance orators. Mr. Bundick is at this time 
about fifty-seven years old, in the prime of 
vigorous manhood, and given entirely to the 
work of making a Christian temperance cit- 
izenship for his country. By a Friend. 
Onancock, Va., June 22, 1904. 



INTRODUCTION. 

By Eev. Dr. A. C. Dixon. 

Me. W. T. Bundick's addresses have 
charmed hundreds of audiences in America, 
and I rejoice that he has decided to put them 
in book form, that future generations may be 
blessed by reading them. The best parts of 
many temperance speeches are the stories 
which are told to excite laughter, move to 
tears, or point a moral. I confess to a de- 
lightful sensation while listening to Mr. Bun- 
dick for the first time. He held my attention 
without a story, humorous or pathetic. He 
convinced my reason by his array of sound 
arguments, without the least trace of ped- 
antry. His smooth flowing and yet forceful 
style made it easy to listen, while the genuine 
earnestness of the man won my confidence. 
One could not help feeling that the best blood 
of his warm heart was enlisted in the subject, 

5 



Introduction. 

which he believed to be of vast importance 
to every individual in his audience. 

Behind it all was a man redeemed by the 
blood of Christ, eager to proclaim Jesus 
Christ as the drunkard's Savior; and I do 
not hesitate to commend this book to the pub- 
lic, and sincerely hope that it will have thou- 
sands of readers. A. C. Dixon. 

Boston, Mass, 



PEEFACE, 



Dear Eeader : 

It was while sitting in the soft twilight of 
"an old Kentucky Home," taking a retro- 
spective view of my past life that I conceived 
the idea of putting my lectures in book form, 
and offering them to the public, with the hope 
that what little good I have done the temper- 
ance cause might not be forgotten, but that 
the heartfelt utterances contained in my lec- 
tures might live on after the writer had 
ceased to exist. 

The thought came to me, as the shadows 
grew longer and the twilight deepened, like 
an inspiration, and it carried me back to my 
boyhood home where the grand old Atlantic 
Ocean and the beautiful waters of the Chesa- 
peake Bay wash its shelving shores, and 
thoughts of home, friends, and acquaintances 
came crowding thick and fast upon my brain, 
and I wondered if my lectures would be for- 
gotten and fail to accomplish good in the 
years that were to come. 

7 



Pkeface. 

Do you know that in the rush and whirl 
of a business life we are too often seemingly 
negligent of our living friends, but twilight 
reveries, in a distant land, fraternal societies, 
and many other agencies have a tendency to 
take us back to our friends' hearts and fire- 
sides, and cement the links of brotherhood 
into a strong, unbreakable chain of love ; thus 
it is while we live, but when we die, alas, too 
often, we are soon forgotten, and the work we 
have done is intered with our bones. 

I have for ten long years given to the 
public my best thoughts and time, and must 
the work begun end when it is said of the 
author, he is dead? This thought worried 
me, and I determined, then and there, to put 
my lectures into such form that they could be 
preserved in your homes, and it is my earnest 
prayer that they may continue to reclaim the 
" Wandering Boy," bring light and sunshine 
into the heart of the drunkard's wife, build 
up once desolate homes, and make better men, 
happier women, and pleasanter homes all 
over our land. The Author. 



8 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE I. pAGB 

Personal Besponsibility 11 

chapter ii. 
Belshazzar's Feast 43 

chapter iii. 
A Blot in Our Civilization 71 

chapter iv. 
Old Theoricus 101 

chapter v. 
American Citizenship 131 

chapter vi. 
The Inquest 165 



9 



CHAPTEE I. 

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 

As delivered in the First Baptist Church at 
Owensboro, Ky., and at Laurel Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Rich- 
mond, Va. 

11 



PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 

My Dear Friends: 

It is a curious fact that this old world, 
sun-kissed .and flower-laden as it is, has ever 
been, since it was spoken into existence, a 
huge scarred battle-field. Man may be said 
to be born a soldier ; a warrior by birthright 
and instinct. Nations and individuals run as 
naturally to combat as if the pathway to car- 
nage was an inclined plane, and military am- 
bition an irresistible momentum. A war-map 
of the world through all its ages would be 
curiously flecked with little flags pointing out 
its battle-fields. Barbaric tribes make war a 
pastime. Civilized armies are equipped and 
clashed together as toys and playthings in 
wanton sport. Spots of earth here and there 
are reddened with gore; nations impover- 
13 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

ished, crippled, and sometimes devastated. 
But then has come a season of exhaustion 
and peace. Flags are furled, cannons cease 
to roar, drums are hushed, swords are re- 
turned to rust for awhile in their scabbards ; 
and comity and commerce usurp for a season 
the reign of combat and cruelty. 

But there is one war that never ends; 
one campaign that, beginning coeval with 
the beginning of time, will only end with 
its close— the combat between good and 
evil, between right and wrong. The field 
upon which this struggle is waged is as 
wide and broad as the world. It is a 
campaign without armistice to treat for 
peace or sue for compromise. The wounded 
are borne away and the dead hustled into 
furrows; but the combat still goes on. 
Here and there success may perch for 
awhile on one or another standard; but the 
grand sum total of victory hangs to-day in 
the balances. No man may dodge his place 
in these ranks. There are no substitutes. 
Wherever society springs up, or is trans- 
14 



Personal Eesponsibility. 

planted, men divide to array themselves on 
one side or the other— ready volunteers, poor 
conscripts of circumstance and chance; 
scarred veterans and raw recruits; heroes 
and cowards. The fight is not always carried 
on in open field, beneath waving flags and 
under the blare of trumpets. Incidents of 
bravery, heroism, sacrifices, hunger, and 
wounds, or of hypocrisy, cowardice, and de- 
sertion too often escape the eye of the war 
correspondent, and are not always blazoned 
to the world in startling headlines. The his- 
tory of this war has only been so far written 
in feeble episode. The full and complete de- 
tails will be open to human eyes only when 
the grand reveille shall summon all the liv- 
ing and dead to the bar of judgment. 

Take an example : I have known a young 
man— and doubtless you have known others— 
who, yielding to the fascination for strong 
drink, went from one stage of desperation 
to another, until every sentiment of manly 
dignity and self-respect was crushed out of 
him. And yet I know that every step in that 

2 15 



Bundick's Lectures. 

poor fellow's downward career was marked 
by feats of heroism and deeds of valor, of 
which a veteran warrior might well be proud. 
Such a one— a schoolmate of mine— ended the 
hopeless struggle at last with a pistol-ball 
through his brain. It was the last desperate, 
despairing act in a long and losing fight for 
victory. Pitiful! You say? 0! Who can 
tell the pity in it? Who describe the agony 
of remorse when the wine has ceased to 
sparkle in the cup, and the dregs are biting 
like a serpent and stinging like an adder! 
But, alas ! it was only an incident of the cam- 
paign. The grave of this poor conscript— a 
conquered hero, if you will— is without a 
stone to mark it ; his name hardly a memory. 
Take another: A neighbor of mine had 
four sons. He was a thrifty farmer ; the boys 
were bright, intelligent lads, and the house- 
hold peaceful and happy. But the father took 
a notion to build a little country store at his 
gate ; and in order to draw trade he licensed 
it for whisky. The evils and dangers of the 
experiment were pointed out to him; but he 
16 



Peksonal Responsibility. 

wanted to advance the interests of his boys 
and make their prospects better. Well, this 
father himself died in less than ten years of 
delirium tremens ; the farm was sold for debt ; 
one of the lads met the same horrible fate as 
his father before he was out of his teens; 
another was shot down in a bar-room during 
a drunken brawl ; the third died a felon in a 
State's prison; and the fourth, the youngest, 
is now a broken-down, decrepit, and thrift- 
less old man. Here is a case in which "the 
sin of the father was visited on the children. ' ' 
"Horrible!" you say! Well, but whose pen 
is graphic enough to portray the evils of that 
one family tragedy— the anguish and despair 
that were in it? Who could gauge even the 
cruel grief and shame that broke the heart of 
the wife and the mother? But it was only a 
passing episode in a great drama. I rode by 
that house only a few days ago. The inci- 
dent had almost been forgotten. 

The theologic discussion of the origin of 
evil and of the moral forces Providence has 
arrayed on the side of good need not enter 
17 



Btxstdick's Lectukes. 

into this argument. "We are not here to deal 
with first causes. Perhaps the most profound 
theologian of the world has not yet sounded 
the depths of that stern decree, "It must 
needs be that offenses come." What con- 
cerns us most is the personal relation we may 
bear to the situation before us ; the obligation 
of individual responsibility— the weight of 
meaning in that awful judgment, "Woe unto 
him by whom the oifense cometh!" 

There is no doubt, my friends, that per- 
sonal responsibility is the most serious con- 
sideration of human existence, the profound - 
est essence of human destiny. There is a 
shock in the reflection that in every moment 
of our lives the opportunity is presented to 
us to choose between right and wrong, to cor- 
rect our latitude and longitude by observa- 
tion and experience, and lay our course clear 
of error and danger. And so this fact brings 
with it the startling realization that the man 
who deliberately chooses evil inevitably fills 
every moment of his life with guilt; that he 
piles up, as it were, day by day a cumulative 
18 



Peksonal Eesponsibility. 

account against himself. True, extraneous 
influences may constantly beset us. The tide 
of battle surges to and fro. Adverse cur- 
rents and contrary winds disturb our ^'sest 
calculations, and the judgment of the world 
is too apt to overlook the important fact that 
much may depend upon which side of a nar- 
row line of chance our lots may be cast. 

But all these considerations are not to be 
weighed alone in the balances of human judg- 
ment. They belong rather to the arbitrament 
of Supreme Justice, to God's omniscience and 
mercy. My poor friend holding a pistol to 
his head in abject despair, after a long and 
impotent struggle with his appetite— yield- 
ing himself a sacrifice, body and soul, to the 
evil that had overcome him— was the mur- 
dered victim of some thoughtless friend. My 
poor neighbor lad, locked up night after night 
with fiends of remorse in a felon's cell, may 
have reasoned bitterly to the end as to the 
justice and fairness of that vicarious punish- 
ment visited upon him for the sin of his 
father. The father himself, rushing upon his 
19 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

doom in that little road-side dram-shop, may 
in his few sober moments have as bitterly 
condemned the law and custom that in a 
Christian land authorized and licensed and 
encouraged him to pull down about his head 
the temple of his own household gods. 

My friends, I pity such human weaklings ; 
from the bottom of my heart I pity them. I 
could shed tears over these poor conscripts 
of circumstance and chance! These boys 
might have been your boys or mine ; this poor 
erring father your father or mine; but who 
shall say there was not through every moment 
of these miserable lives a present as well as 
a retroactive responsibility; who shall say 
that as human beings justice may not hold 
them to account! I have asserted that the 
opportunity to choose between right and 
wrong is present with us through every mo- 
ment of our lives. It presents itself in vari- 
ous phases. A man is responsible for him- 
self, to some extent for his neighbor, for the 
community in which he lives, for the govern- 
ment that shelters him. As a social integer 

20 



Personal Eesponsibility. 

he is a part of the great body politic. He 
may will to do right or he may will to do 
wrong, and thus far he impresses his individ- 
ual identity upon the trend of human thought 
and action. 

There is certainly no fact connected with 
human existence more aptly demonstrable 
than the law of social interdependence. It is 
taught in every page of Holy Writ, it runs 
through the history of every age, and it 
stands out before us in every experience of 
our daily lives. 1 1 No man liveth unto himself 
alone. ' ' Love for one 's neighbor is the foun- 
dation rock upon which our very social sys- 
tem is grounded, and before we can attain to 
the full stature of manhood we must realize 
the full and important sense of public respon- 
sibility and duty. The man who answers for 
the blood of his neighbor with a selfish in- 
quiry, "Am I my brother's keeper T" is a 
murderer at heart. Our several and various 
talents were not given to us for our own self- 
ish purposes any more than they were given 
to us to be folded in a napkin and hidden 
21 



Bttndick's Lectures. 

away in the earth. The Creator in dispens- 
ing His good gifts has made us individual 
agents for their distribubtion among our fel- 
lows—not to be locked up for our own selfish 
uses at home. It is a grand part of God's 
purpose that "they who see should lead the 
blind, they who are wise should direct the 
foolish, they who are strong should help the 
weak, they who are good should conserve the 
bad." 

And so, my friends, from amid the thun- 
derings of Sinai has come to us through all 
the ages of time that grand epitome of man's 
whole duty, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as 
thyself." 

"Abou Ben Adam — may his tribe increase ! 
He awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw within the moonlight in his room, 
Making it bright like a lily in bloom, 
An angel writing in a book of gold. 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adam bold, 
And to the presence in the room he said, 
1 What writest thou?' The vision raised its head 
And, with a look, made all of sweet accord, 
Answered, ' The names of those who love the Lord.' 

22 



Personal Besponsibility. 

'Is mine one?' said Abou. 'Nay, not so,' the voice 

replied. 
Abou spoke more low, but cheerily still, and said, 
1 1 pray thee, then, write me as one who loves his fel- 

lowmen.' 
The angel wrote and vanished. But on the next night 
It came again with a great awaking light 
And showed the names of those whom love of God had 

blest, 
And lo ! Ben Adam's name led all the rest ! " 

It sometimes seems, my Christian breth- 
ren, that the highest test of Christian char- 
acter and Christian grace is the test of a 
sense of personal responsibility for our 
neighbor. God only knows how many sins 
of human frailty may be hidden from the eye 
of Divine Justice in that sublime plaudit, ' ' In- 
asmuch as ye did it unto the least of these 
thy brethren ye did it unto Me." Let us 
apply these arguments, if you please, to the 
great and crowning evil of our generation. 
Of course, I mean the licensed liquor-traffic. 
I have elsewhere styled this great social evil 
a hideous monster, the composite image of 
all evils. Do you accept it, or need I stop 
here to prove it? Why should I marshal a 



23 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

grand array of figures before you? Why 
should I open the records of our national 
revenue bureau, the records of poverty, lu- 
nacy, crime, butchery, of drunkards' graves 
and broken hearts. Why need I dare you to 
look about your own community, to lift the 
curtains of your neighboring bar-rooms on 
the inside dramas playing there night after 
night; and, alas, it may be for some of you 
to tear open a wound that, like a cancerous 
ulcer, is eating into the happiness and sanc- 
tity of your own fireside. 

Come up like men and be honest with 
yourselves. I am not here to talk what you 
may be pleased to style Prohibition cant, to 
entertain you as a prohibition crank with 
moving spectacles of a drunkard's exhibition. 
I could not paint a picture more harrowing 
than you have seen with your own eyes. I 
am not here to condemn and abuse the poor 
drunkard, nor to arouse an open warfare with 
the licensed dealer, nor to soothe the con- 
sciences of sober men. I am here to talk plain 
reason with sensible people, to discharge a 
24 



Personal Eesponsibility. 

solemn responsibility towards responsible 
human beings. Come, then, and break down 
the barriers of your prejudices, and boldly 
admit that the liquor-traffic is the crowning 
evil of our generation, a hideous monster, the 
composite picture of all evil and villainies, 
the devil's best friend, and man and God's 
worst enemy. Let us understand each other 
from the beginning. 

Unfortunately, my friends, propinquity to 
evil begets strange and unnatural tolerations. 
Associations reconcile us to all sorts of anom- 
alies. I have known of a medical student 
who had a horror of touching a dead body, 
but who a few months later was discovered 
alone in a dissecting-room in the dead of the 
night oblivious to every other sentiment than 
that of tracing out the course of an artery. 
I have known men who would faint at the 
sight of blood, but who on the battle-field 
could calmly bear off the mangled and dead. 
I have known a man who lived in close prox- 
imity to a rendering establishment, who as- 
sured me that the nauseous odors were no 
25 



Btjndick's Lectures. 

longer noticeable. I have known four beau- 
tiful sisters, daughters of a brutal, drunken 
father, whose daily lives were tortured by 
all sorts of parental cruelties, but who out 
of many suitors chose each a drunken hus- 
band. They passed from one drunkard's 
home to another, and every one of them now 
living is a drunkard's widow. 

And so it is. We have lived so long in 
the gloom of this great curse we have almost 
ceased to be chilled by its shadow. We have 
grown shockingly familiar with its bloody 
tragedies ; our eyes are blinded to its horrors, 
and our noses are no longer sensible to its 
stench. Only the other day I saw a poor, 
feeble, abandoned drunkard staggering his 
way with tangled steps along the street, and 
reputable Christian gentlemen making merry 
over the spectacle. It is only when perchance 
it brings some terrible tragedy to our door, 
or steals into the sanctity of our own home 
dogging the footsteps of a wayward son or 
brother, that we wake up to the reality of its 
presence. I have known a gentleman who 
26 



Peksonal Eesponsibility. 

had no patience with temperance work and 
little respect for temperance workers, a man 
who preached loudly of the moral stamina 
of his family and of the cowardice of temper- 
ance pledges. He had been a moderate 
drinker all his life. A youth he thought 
needed only the safeguard of sturdy moral 
training. But one night they brought his boy 
home from a saloon and laid him down at his 
mother's feet a bar-room wreck, cast up on 
the surge of a bar-room orgie. They parted 
back the hair from his forehead, where an 
ugly would had lain concealed; they felt his 
cold wrist; they tore open his blood-matted 
vest. But the heart, so lately beating with 
youthful hopes, would beat no more. He was 
one more victim of drunken frenzy in a bar- 
room brawl. 

These shocks open men's eyes and wake 
up the latent manhood in them, however 
soundly it may be slumbering. It is only 
under such circumstances we begin to realize 
fully the heinousness of this great crime of 
society, and the solemn obligation of duty to 
27 



Btjndick's Lectures. 

combat it. But how horrible the awakening ! 
I have said I am not here to condemn and 
abuse the drunkard. Poor fellow, his pitiable 
spectacle touches the deepest fountains of my 
sympathy ! I know his pathway, and I know 
all its horns and precipices, its bruises and 
its wounds, its vanquished resolutions, its de- 
lirium and its remorse. No poor victim has 
ever reached the end of that journey— 
whether it be poverty, a madhouse, a prison, 
or a grave— who has not suffered all these 
bitter experiences. His sin has marked him 
for the eyes of the world. God has cursed 
him; why should If You know nothing per- 
chance of the battles he has fought, of the 
anguish of his defeats, of the shame that has 
shadowed his life. He may have fallen a van- 
quished hero at last, with his face still to the 
foe; a poor conscript of circumstance in the 
ranks of evil ; a victim on the side of a great 
moral wrong for which he was in no way re- 
sponsible. I commend him to your pity and 
your prayers. 

And you, my lady hearers, you who steal 
28 



Personal Responsibility. 

like angels upon the battle-field almost before 
its smoke has rolled away among the hills, 
pity these poor victims ! There are so many 
of them suffering and dying around us in this 
great struggle with evil needing the ministra- 
tions of your gentle hand. If they are not 
your fathers and brothers and sons, they may 
be "somebody's darlings/' veterans of many 
campaigns, now wan and ragged, bruised and 
wounded, soiled and tattered with smoke and 
carnage; but they started to the field one 
bright and hopeful morning with a mother's 
benison on their heads and a mother 's kiss on 
their lips. For her sake, pity and care for 
her boy. "Rescue the perishing, care for the 
dying, Jesus is merciful, Jesus can save." 
Well, what of the licensed dealer? The 
man who takes our boys from the straight 
and narrow paths we have marked out for 
them, and turns them into the wide way and 
broad road leading to destruction. The man 
who uproots and plucks out one by one every 
noble impulse we have planted in their young 
hearts, and turned them traitors to their own 

29 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

manhood, what of him? Well, I have never 
yet seen one of them carefully concerned 
about all the details and flimsy safeguards 
of the law; but so far as dispensing this 
poison may go, he is a law-abiding citizen 
doing a legitimate business. Some of them 
are personally agreeable fellows. They con- 
tribute to charitable enterprises, and even to 
the Churches. They do n't like all the fea- 
tures of their business. They have their un- 
pleasant episodes and even dark days. They 
deal with a disagreeable clientele. But it 
pays. Perhaps they would as soon do some- 
thing else if it provided as easy and profit- 
able an income; but there is a demand for 
strong drink, and somebody must supply the 
demand. It is a law of trade as old as the 
science of political economy. The trade is 
always good, and the business always pays. 
That in brief is the position of the dealer. 
We had just as well see things as they are, 
and accept the situation as it is. It seems 
to me a vain and illogical effort to spend so 
much prohibition effort and invective against 

30 



Personal Responsibility. 

an enterprise founded upon such a rock. The 
dealer has the argument of the law, and you 
can not down him with the dignity and maj- 
esty of the State at his back. It is worse than 
folly to assault him with abuse or a hatchet. 
And so he sits there a mora], social, and po- 
litical arbiter sheltered securely under the 
jegis of the law. He directs your legislation, 
he dictates your local government, he levies 
taxes on your lands and your workshops, he 
peoples your almshouses, he packs your court 
dockets, he violates the peace of your com- 
munity, and he damages the public health. 
But he does all this according to law. He 
is licensed and authorized to do it. He buys 
the privilege and pays for it, and he has the 
equitable right to use it. And when he takes 
your neighbor and by the slow process of 
sapping his physical manhood, or by the ab- 
rupt termination of some drunken frenzy robs 
him of his life, it is simply a legal murder, 
as legal as that your sheriff executes in the 
jail-yard under the solemn sentence of your 
court. And when he takes your boy, sir— 
3 31 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

you who have little respect for the temper- 
ance effort— and sends him home to lay him 
dead at his mother's feet, the shock may 
awaken a fearful spirit of vindictive venge- 
ance in your father's bosom. Ah, well! But 
you may only sit down with a broken heart 
and weep over that boy, and the bright hopes 
you will bury with him. It was a legal mur- 
der. That dealer was licensed to rob and 
poison and murder. It was the law that lifted 
the weapon and crashed the bullet into your 
boy's brain, the law that licenses frenzy and 
murder! Merciful heavens! 

What is law? Why, law is simply the 
crystallization of popular sentiment, the 
sentiment of your fellow-citizens, of your 
neighbors and friends, even of the very neigh- 
bors and friends who stood about you in sor- 
rowful sympathy as you lowered the body of 
your murdered boy to its last resting-place. 
Your own sentiment it may be. That 's the 
law— the law that licenses murder. God pity 
us, that we live on in this enlightened day 
under the shadow of such a curse! But I 
32 



Peksonal Responsibility. 

repeat. I am not here to soothe and flatter 
the consciences of sober men. I have said 
that we belong to one social system, one great 
body politic, and that over all the world from 
the beginning of time a warfare has been 
waged over the issues of good and evil, and 
right and wrong. I have said that in this 
warfare no man may dodge his place in the 
ranks ; that there are no substitutes. I have 
tried to show you that a sense of individual 
responsibility is the most serious consider- 
ation of human existence, the profoundest es- 
sence of human destiny, that in every moment 
of our lives the opportunity is presented to 
us of choosing between good and evil; and 
that as a necessary corollary the deliberate 
choice of evil is the daily piling up a cumu- 
lative account of guilt. 

Now I come to lay before you a plain issue 
between right and wrong, and ask you which 
you will choose— under which banner you will 
serve. There is something wrong, something 
radically and cruelly wrong in our body poli- 
tic. You can't question or doubt it. A thou- 
33 



Bundick's Lectures. 

sand tongues are constantly proclaiming it 
in your ears. The poor victim knows it, and 
feels it, too, through all the poverty, shame, 
and bitterness of his soul. He exploits it 
to the world in his seedy coat, his bruised and 
bloated face, his reeling step. He whispers 
it from the death-couch of the poor-house, 
and now and then proclaims it from the gib- 
bet—with the hangman's noose about his 
neck. The fat and prosperous dealer knows 
it, and like the vulture scenting the battle- 
field he comes to feed upon its offal. The 
statesman knows it, and cowardly shuts his 
eyes to the horrible, sickening truth. The 
poor heart-broken mother knows it, the de- 
serted wife knows it, the widow and orphan 
know it, through all the solitude of their 
cheated lives. You know it; the whole world 
knows it. What guilty knowledge is so uni- 
versal and so horribly patent! And yet I 
say so inured are we to the presence of this 
evil among us we have come to accept it with 
amazing toleration. Its shocking statistics 
34 



Peksonal. Responsibility. 

that now and then find their way into the 
newspapers pass under our eyes as meaning- 
less figures, its tales of poverty as idle pass- 
ing news, its records of crime and frenzy and 
murder the mere froth of turbulent society. 
And so we stand calm and complacent 
while the dramshop flaunts its challenge in 
our faces at every corner, while young men 
in their prime and old men long fettered in 
bondage march by us to their doom, while 
lawlessness runs riot in our streets the daily 
newspaper serves up its horrors for our 
breakfast table, and while the fat and pros- 
perous dealer sits and smiles down serenely 
on all this moral and social wreck,— yes, there 
is something wrong, and the world knows it. 
And if I am a temperance crank, and the 
arguments I am here to press upon you are 
the mere whinings of prohibition cant, you 
dare not plead ignorance in the bar of judg- 
ment before the tribunal of your own con- 
sciences. I have told you only that which 
you already know. "Well, knowing it, what 
35 



Bundick's Lecttjees. 

then? I ask the question a responsible hu- 
man being of my responsible fellow-citizens, 
with all this guilty knowledge, what are you 
doing and what do you propose to do? For 
years the Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union has been laying before you a plain 
issue between good and evil, between right 
and wrong. Which side have you chosen; 
under which banner have you enlisted? And 
again the opportunity of choice will be pre- 
sented to you. Can you hesitate or doubt? 
Look about you all over this fair land lying 
to-day somber and gloomy under the shadow, 
of this curse, a crime so inwrought with our 
body politic that it follows the flag as a mock- 
ery of our civilization to the distant islands 
of the sea. The White Man's Curse. my 
friends, we have compromised too long with 
our consciences. We are piling up a cumu- 
lative account of guilt in this great nation 
that begins to call for national retribution. 
How long will the sword of justice rest in its 
scabbard? Come up to the nation's rescue. 
Here the old campaign between right and 
36 



Peksonal Responsibility. 

wrong, old as the history of time, is waxing 
hotter than ever before. 

This great moral and social issue is to be 
henceforth the salient angle in the line of 
battle. See the contending forces! On one 
side the manufacturers and dealers, flanked 
on every hand by long lines of moderate 
drinkers, volunteers and conscripts, veterans 
and raw recruits, statesmen and politicians, 
and often professed Christians, all fighting 
under the banner of a composite image of all 
evils and villainies, the devil's best friend 
and God and man's worst enemy. On the 
other side a little Spartan band holding the 
narrow pass of Temperance, fighting day by 
day as heroes that can be crushed but never 
conquered ; looking up with tearful eyes and 
prayerful hearts to the great God of battles. 
my friends, bring up the reserves. Let us 
press the foe, and let the battle-cry ring out 
far and wide over all the field, "For God 
and Home and Country ! ' ' 

My lady friends, have you ever paused to 
consider how far for good or for evil your 
37 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

influence may extend in behalf of this tem- 
perance question? Do you know that of all 
the evils of intemperance there are none so 
bitter and none so lasting as those which fall 
upon the head of woman? Ah, the influence 
of your sex is a blessed or a fearful thing! 
It is said that man rules the world. But 
woman rules man. In every age of history 
she has been the power behind the throne, 
and I have sometimes thought that it may 
perhaps be the hand of retributive justice 
that deals out to you the crudest, bitterest 
share of this great social curse. Why, it is 
woman's hand, you know, that molds our in- 
fancy, that leads us from the cradle to the 
threshold of the outer world. It is woman's 
smiles that make us men or demons; it is 
woman's hand too often that lifts the wine- 
cup to our lips, or steadies our staggering 
feet through the mazes of the dance. Ah, it 
is hard indeed to tell for how much of the 
evils of intemperance your sex may be held 
accountable ! Strange ! For do not all these 
evils surely come back to you in tattered rags, 
38 



Peksonal Responsibility. 

in broken hearts, in desolate hearthstones, 
and in deserted homes ? 

I am happy to know that yon have here in 
this city a splendid Woman's Christian Tem- 
perance Union. Make it a tower of strength 
in yonr midst. Think of Mother Thompson 
and the Crusade. A company of seventy 
ladies marched out of a prayer-meeting 
and conquered by songs, exhortations, and 
prayers until they had emptied towns of 
saloons. And since it seems God directed the 
Crusade to organize, we have had our noble, 
active, and never-tiring Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union. I thank God for the ten 
thousand local unions in this country, and for 
that magnificent weekly, the Union Signal, 
that has carried light and inspiration to thou- 
sands of homes in this land! I thank God 
for having given to the world that heroic 
Christian temperance leader, Frances E. 
Willard, who went home to glory-land in Feb- 
ruary, 1898. Methinks I could see the angels 
when they gathered around her dying couch 
as her soul was about to wing its way to 
39 



Bundick's Lectures. 

heaven. And the memory, the influence of 
that great and good woman will live on and 
on and on. 

Some of yon perhaps remember that old 
tradition of a pious old monk, who years be- 
fore the era of printing, shut up in the gloomy 
walls of an old abbey, spent his whole life in 
copying pious books. And when the task of 
the patient, pious old laborer was done, they 
laid him away under the abbey aisle, and 
carving his simple name on the marble floor 
above his head they left him to the rest and 
to the peace of oblivion. But when years had 
passed away, when the memory of the good 
old man had perished from the living, when 
passing feet had trodden his name from the 
marble floor above his head, and the dead of 
a new generation had come to take their 
places beside the old, there as they hollowed 
a new grave under the abbey aisle, tradition 
says, they saw lying in the dust and ashes 
of death a warm and living hand. That hand 
which through years of patient toil had 
wrought for the glory of truth and for the 
40 



Peksonal. Responsibility. 

good of mankind ; that hand which, embalmed 
in the immortality of a noble office, had defied 
the powers of corruption and decay. Men 
and women wax old and die, but principles 
are deathless and eternal. Human agencies 
fall by the way, but the generous impulse, the 
beneficent purpose can never, never, never 
die. My friends, the hand that binds up the 
broken-hearted, that lifts the veil of error 
from the eyes of groping ignorance, that 
leads the lost and wandering back to the por- 
tals of truth, aye, that works to win souls for 
the kingdom of Jesus Christ, can never per- 
ish. No, not even in the grave. 



41 



CHAPTER II. 

BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 

Delivered at First Methodist Episcopal 
Church , Mount Vernon, N. Y.; Central 
Baptist Church, Memphis, Tenn.; Broad- 
way Christian Church, Louisville, Ky.; 
and Central Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, Baltimore, Md. 

43 



BELSHAZZAK'S FEAST. 

There was a wonderful truth taught in 
the goblet which the genius of a poor heathen 
fashioned years ago. Having made the 
model of a serpent he placed it in the bottom 
of a social cup, coiling as if for the spring, 
a pair of gleaming eyes in its lifted head, and 
in its open mouth fangs raised to strike. He 
who quaffed the wine could not see what lay 
beneath, till as he reached the dregs that 
dreadful head rose up and glistened before 
his eyes. Eemember, friends, that he who 
places a social glass to a neighbor's mouth 
conceals beneath the pledge of friendship the 
gleaming eyes, the open mouth, the poisonous 
fangs of a serpent coiled beneath, and when 
the cup is drunk, the pleasure quaffed, the 
bitter dregs drained to the bottom, that ser- 
pent's head with deadly venom may strike 
45 



Bundick's Lectures. 

into the soul the ghastly terrors of a lifelong 
curse. 

In this busy American to-day of ours we 
are rather inclined to regard ancient history 
as something wholly irrelevant and nowise 
to the point when grave national questions 
are pending. ' ' History, ' ' says some man, ' ' 
history is all right in its place. What we want 
are facts, present up-to-date facts, when living 
issues are at stake. Facts we want, and facts 
we must have for an intelligent solution of 
any of the great problems that confront us 
as American citizens to-day. And history 
too. Why, we want all the history that can 
be brought to bear ; we stand in sore need of 
all the light that history's past can throw on 
present-day darkness and difficulty." 

If history can serve our purpose, then as 
1 endeavor to speak to you for a short while 
on the subject of intemperance let us have 
recourse to it therefore, and be edified accord- 
ingly. The long tale of the past we have with 
us always, and so long as to-day remains the 
grand sum total of yesterdays, ancient and 
46 



Belshazzar's Feast. 

modern ; so long as history continues to repeat 
itself over the crumbling ruins of long-forgot- 
ten civilization; so long as human nature is 
the same in every age and clime, just so long 
must we read in its records many a striking 
parallelism to much that is being written in 
our great life story to-day. And it is in view 
of this fact that I invite you to witness with 
me, if you please, across twenty-four cen- 
turies of intervening yesterdays, the enact- 
ment of as horrible a Babylonish tragedy as 
that of the liquor-traffic itself, which is being 
played daily and hourly throughout the 
length and breadth of this country. 

And it is no strange, unfamiliar story that 
I beg you to consider with me to-day. Every 
man, I doubt not, in this audience has read 
it or heard it many a time— the history of 
Belshazzar and the handwriting on the wall. 
Perhaps, too, you will agree with me in think- 
ing it a tale whose very title, sinister sound- 
ing as it is, bespeaks for it more than ordi- 
nary interest. We are all more or less fa- 
miliar with the simple Biblical account as 
a 47 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

found in the Book of Daniel. You remember 
that Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, 
gives a great feast to a thousand of his lords, 
drinking wine before the thousand. That, be- 
coming inflamed with strong drink, the king 
orders the golden and silver vessels that his 
father, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the 
temple at Jerusalem to be brought, that he, his 
princes, his wives, and his concubines may 
drink therein. That together they drink wine 
from the sacred vessels, praising the gods of 
gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood 
and of stone. That in the same night came 
forth fingers of a man's handwriting over 
against the candlestick upon the plaster of 
the king's palace. That the king, greatly 
troubled thereat, demands of the wise men 
of Babylon the interpretation of the writing, 
which, unknown to them, is interpreted by 
a Jewish captive, Daniel, as a judgment 
against Belshazzar and the prophecy of his 
downfall. That in the same night is Bel- 
shazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. 
So much for the story in outline, but it is 
48 



Belshazzak's Feast. 

left to the imagination to fill out the details 
of this picture of Eastern magnificence, vo- 
luptuous debauchery, heathen idolatry, and 
Oriental tragedy. It is night in world-famed 
Babylon. A royal banquet is in progress, for 
the Chaldean monarch— in honor of some 
lately won victory, perhaps— has said, Gro to ; 
but we will eat, drink, and be merry. Around 
him are gathered his thousand retainers, his 
wives, and his concubines. Festivity abounds 
in the gorgeous palace halls. The royal 
tables, glittering with gold and silver, stand 
laden with dried locusts, pomegranates, 
grapes, citrons, choice meats, and an abun- 
dance of mixed wine in the huge vases. The 
soft music of harpers steals insinuatingly on 
the ear, the air is heavy with incense and the 
fragrance of tropical fruits and flowers, while 
Belshazzar and his company sip wine and the 
revelry grows ever louder. But the king is not 
satisfied ; he bethinks him of the sacred vessels 
that once adorned the Jewish Temple at Jeru- 
salem. He commands them to be brought, 
that he, his princes, his wives, and his concu- 

49 



Bundick's Lectures. 

bines may drink therein ; and while the wine- 
drinking goes on together they lift lond voices 
in praise of the gods of their heathen concep- 
tions. There is a veritable babel in the royal 
palace halls, and the revelry grows ever 
londer and wilder. Bnt look, over against the 
candlestick npon the plaster of yonder wall 
are the fingers of a man's handwriting, writ- 
ing on the wall. The king sees it, and sud- 
denly, awfully sobered, his countenance 
changes, his thoughts trouble him, his knees 
smite each other gruesomely; the finger of 
justice and of judgment to come is writing 
its message on every lineament of his terror- 
stricken face, in the trembling of his nerve- 
less hand, in every muscle of his wine-soaked, 
sin-cursed body. Silence, terrible momentary 
silence falls on that gay royal banquet, with 
its glitter and glare and its rudely inter- 
rupted revelry. Then the king cries aloud for 
the Chaldean soothsayers, recklessly prom- 
ising a scarlet robe, a gold chain, the third 
place in the kingdom to whosoever shall read 
the writing and give its interpretation. But 

50 



Belshazzar's Feast. 

the magicians are puzzled, confounded. In 
the midst of this growing confusion the queen- 
mother, entering, recommends Daniel, who, 
being brought, declares the interpretation of 
the writing to be: "God hath numbered thy 
kingdom and finished it. Belshazzar, thou 
art weighed in the balances and found want- 
ing. With thy hardness of heart, thy stiff- 
necked disobedience, thy impious feasts, and 
thy drunken idolatry. Lo, thy kingdom is 
therefore divided, and given to the Medes 
and Persians. ' ' And the curtain falls on the 
close following fulfillment of this judgment 
and prophecy. 

My friends, it is the old, old story of 
cause and effect, older than the name of Bel- 
shazzar the king of the Chaldeans, older than 
Babylon itself, as old as evil in the world, as 
new as last night's drunken carousal. But 
you say, what has this Oriental tragedy to 
do with our Occidental intemperance of some 
two thousand years later? To which I reply : 
But isn't it applicable, though? Let us see. 
And you will bear with me, if you please, 
51 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

while I endeavor to point out to yon a paral- 
lelism that to me certainly is eminently sug- 
gestive. Belshazzar the king may be said to 
represent, though inadequately, the liquor- 
traffic itself, reigning supreme in the saloons 
and bar-rooms of our modern Babylon, an 
absolute monarch with undisputed authority 
over the money, the happiness, the honor, the 
lives, the all of his subjects. A sovereign 
before whose despotism the power of a Baby- 
lonish Belshazzar fades into insignificance; 
a king, I repeat, and therefore powerful. But 
whence comes the power of this Oriental 
despot, and every princeling as well? Not 
from heaven, as many an earthly vice-regent 
of the gods has learned too late with the crim- 
son tide of his own life 's-blood. Whence comes 
it, America, I say? And from Virginia to 
California, from Michigan to Texas, comes 
the mighty shout that ' ' all power comes from 
the people,' ' and the echo thunders back, 
' ' The people, the people ! ' ' Thank God ! we 
are glad it is so. Glad that we as citizens of 
these United States have lodged within us a 

52 



Belshazzak's Feast. 

law-making power surpassing Belshazzar's— 
the power of a God-given franchise, and if 
Belshazzar is king, he is king because we al- 
low it, because law and public sentiment con- 
done it, because we personally, individually 
by our ballot smile on him— bid him God- 
speed; because we have placed in the hands 
of every saloon-keeper in the country the 
scepter of a legal institution, and bade him 
wield it for the devil and damnation. Bel- 
shazzar the king, I repeat, holding his court 
in the fashionable, high-licensed saloons of 
large cities, in the bar-rooms of the country, 
in every wayside dram-shop. A king before 
whom politicians of the baser sort bow, a bal- 
lot snatcher and despoiler of franchise and 
freedom; a king, and by our consent. But, 
again, if king, then not only powerful, but 
rich with the hard earnings of poor men, and 
the money that should have been used for 
bread and meat and clothes and home com- 
forts for suffering women and pitiful chil- 
dren. Who is it that is clothed in purple and 
fine linen? Who is it that fareth sumptuously 
53 



Btjndick's Lecttjkes. 

every day? Not the depraved offcasts of 
society, too often the victims of the social 
glass. Not a country full of work-worn, ill- 
fed, heart and body sick women and children 
of drink-cursed husbands and fathers; none 
of these, but rather Belshazzar himself, with 
his brewers and distillers, his great organ- 
izations, and his thousands of soft-handed, 
hard-hearted lords. 

But let us on with the parallelism. The 
first verse of the Scriptural narrative says 
with Biblical conciseness, Belshazzar the king 
made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, 
and drank wine before the thousand. And 
there is likewise feasting in the palace of the 
rum-king to-day, every day, every night in 
the year — the feasting of devils let loose in 
man. No need of other royal tables than the 
saloon counters of the country glittering with 
the gold and silver of a rum-cursed nation, 
and laden with poison, the slow, insidious 
poison that in the end biteth like a serpent 
and stingeth like an adder. The sound of 
oaths, coarse jests, and all uncleanness fall 

54 



Belshazzak's Feast. 

insinuatingly on the fast reeling senses, the 
fumes of a hellward burning incense float- 
ing heavily on the whisky-charged air. Is it, 
I ask you, a feast of reason, a flow of anything 
but damning liquor by whatsover name 
called? And further, Belshazzar must needs 
desecrate the sacred chosen vessels intended 
for God's service, defiling and polluting men, 
soiling with the sin-cursed stuff the young 
manhood of our country, and too often the 
virtue of its young women, unhallowing all 
that pure men are accustomed to reverence. 
And is nobody to blame for this wide- 
spread, unblushing desecration at the hands 
of a legalized rum-traffic? Does the voting 
Church of God set its seal of approval on this 
unholy violation of all that is best and purest 
in God's sight and man's? But we may not 
pause. Desecration leads to idolatry. Bel- 
shazzar and his imitative company fall to 
praising the gods of gold and of silver, of 
brass, of iron, of wood and of stone. Like- 
wise from the banquet of the rum king there 
goes up daily a mighty babel of praise to the 
55 



Btjndick's Lectukes. 

gods that see not, neither hear nor know, to 
the glittering golden idols of tantalus appe- 
tites, to the silver eagle of avarice, to the gods 
of sounding, unavailing brass, rusting iron, 
rotten wood, and cold, crumbling stone. God 
pity them and us who would cast our votes in 
favor of such idolatry, and send the gospel 
to heathendom by others! I press on, how- 
ever, for the finger of justice is writing its 
message on the wall of every whisky palace, 
beer shop, and rum hole in the country, writ- 
ing the mystic message of "Mene, Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin," and amid the awful con- 
sternation that ensues the wild, drunken 
curses of maddened blasphemers, and the 
speechless horror of beastly sots I hear the 
clarion voice of Daniel interpreting, "God 
hath numbered thy kingdom," the day when 
the kingdom of strong drink shall be num- 
bered, when the long tale of saloon-born an- 
archy, political corruption, sorrow, woe, pov- 
erty, misery, distress, and bloodshed shall be 
ended and finis written forever. May God 
help us to hasten that finis ! 

56 



Belshazzar 's Feast. 

But hark! the voice of Daniel again 
reaches my ear, "Weighed in the balances.' ' 
Let us picture it for ourselves a moment. 
A pair of world-wide, heaven-high, hell-deep 
scales swing slowly through time and eter- 
nity. In one side is Belshazzar, demon of 
strong drink, arch-fiend of the race, enemy of 
God and man, our nation's greatest curse, 
the subsidizer of its ballot, the destroyer of 
its citizens. Belshazzar the saloon traffic, 
with its one hundred and fifty millions of dol- 
lars to aid in defraying the nation's expenses. 
In the other— God, help us to face it, how- 
ever heartrending!— in the other the blasted 
homes of drinking, drunkard husbands, fa- 
thers, sons, and brothers, the unavailing tears 
of feeble women, the wailing of tender, inno- 
cent children with crime, pauperism, disease, 
and insanity. 

My friends, have you ever looked into the 
subject of alcoholic desecration to see what 
it means, and how it is done? If you have 
not, or if you have, no matter, let us read 
together for a few moments a little physi- 
57 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

ology and Bible on the subject. In turning 
my eye cursorily over the index of a hand- 
book on physiology and hygiene, I read such 
headings as "Alcohol a Poison/ ' "Alcohol 
in the Stomach," "Alcohol and the Liver." 
Then glancing over the text proper, I find 
that alcohol, according to scientific experi- 
ment, is a slow poison, a narcotic poison, 
treacherous and enticing. I read on further 
and learn that alcohol irritates the mu- 
cous membrane lining of the stomach and hin- 
ders digestion. I read on further, and learn 
that alcohol hardens the lung tissue and ren- 
ders the drunkard liable to hemorrhage and 
consumption. I read on further, and learn 
that alcohol paralyzes the nerves and weakens 
the heart action. And last of all, under a dis- 
cussion headed "Alcohol and the Mind," I 
learn that alcohol is an enemy to the brain, 
dethroning for the time being the intelligence 
and moral nature, the reason and judgment. 
And this in brief is a part of alcoholic dese- 
cration, the cool verdict of science, and one 
of the best temperance speeches on record. 
58 



Belshazzar's Feast. 

Now let us see what God's Word says 
about the desecration of these bodies of ours. 
Listen while I read that ' i We are to present 
these bodies of ours a living sacrifice wholly 
acceptable unto God, which is your reason- 
able service.' ' And again: "Know ye not 
that your body is the temple of God, and that 
the Holy Spirit dwelleth in you ? If any man 
defile the temple of God, him shall God de- 
stroy, for the temple of God is holy, which 
temple ye are. ' ' And once more : ' ' Know ye 
not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost, and ye are not your own, for ye are 
bought with a price? Therefore glorify God 
in your body and in your spirit, which are 
God's." 

But I ask you, my brother, is the sacrifice 
of an unholy, unclean body made so by alco- 
holic desecration acceptable unto God? Does 
a drunkard glorify God in his body, much less 
in his spirit, both of which are God's? And 
now let us come to the greatest fact in God's 
universe, the sublime old story of the cross, 
and how through it, and it alone, a world of 
59 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

intemperance must be brought to the feet of 
God. Sooner or later we must realize that 
beyond all Keeley Cures for this disease on 
earth, beyond all balms in Gilead, is the blood 
of Jesus Christ, His Son that cleanseth us 
from all sin. But shall we wait, my friends, 
till a man's body is desecrated, his moral na- 
ture weakened, and his whole life laid waste, 
before we point him to that Savior from the 
sin of intemperance, and all others? 

But there are those of you before me to- 
day who doubt in your heart of hearts the 
final triumph of temperance over intemper- 
ance, of good over evil. Some of us, perhaps 
all, have at one time or another prayed with 
our lips, "Thy Kingdom come," while we 
knew in our hearts that nothing would sur- 
prise us more than an answer to our prayer. 
In other words, some of us think we know 
too much about the world and human nature 
to believe that the kingdom of God could ever 
come to our sin- stained earth. And yet, and 
yet, my brother, God's own Son put that 
prayer on our lips and in our hearts, and 

60 



Belshazzak's Feast. 

lives, too, if we live aright. I do not mean to 
say that we know, yon and I, all that is in- 
cluded in "Thy Kingdom come." Nor do I 
mean that we are to hereby infer that evil 
will not always be in the world until time shall 
be no more ; bnt I do mean to say that I be- 
lieve that each one of ns has his part to do 
in bringing that kingdom to dwell among men. 
Nay, more, I believe with all my heart in that 
one far-off Divine event to which the whole 
creation moves. If I did not, I should be ox 
all men most miserable, a pessimist of pes- 
simists, if I did not believe, I say, that right 
must conquer in the end, since God is God. 
But again, Daniel is speaking, "Weighed 
in the balances and found wanting, ' ' wanting 
in all that makes life worth the living, want- 
ing in the old-fashioned virtues of love, joy, 
peace, and hope for the life that now is, and 
that which is to come. Shall the kingdom of 
the rum fiend be divided and given to the 
Medes and Persians? Will that day come 
when it shall be said, "Belle is taken, Mero- 
dock is broken in pieces, her idols are con- 
61 



Bundick's Lectures; 

founded, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all 
the graven images of her gods he hath broken 
unto the ground." 

One point more in the parallelism, how- 
ever—the message of justice, the prophecy 
of Belshazzar's downfall, how did it come! 
And you answer, " Through the fingers of a 
man's handwriting on the wall." Is there, or 
is there not, significance for us in this human 
handwriting on a Babylonish palace wall that 
long ancient yesternight! My friends, the 
message of justice continues to speak through 
our human hands, when we, wielding the pen 
of a conscience-free ballot, write, For God 
and Home and Native Land. But let us hear 
the conclusion of the whole argument. The 
story ends with awful abruptness, for "in 
that night was Belshazzar the king of the 
Chaldeans slain. ' ' And annually in this coun- 
try one hundred thousand are slain. One 
hundred thousand men and women for whom 
Jesus died lie down in drunkards ' graves and 
are consigned to a drunkard's hell. And an- 
nually one billion two hundred millions of 
62 



Belshazzak's Feast. 

dollars are spent for alcohol. If one-half of 
this big, round sum could be spent on the poor 
and the needy in this country, there need be 
no cry at any time of hard times within the 
bounds of America. But why stand and weep 
over this waste of the people 's money ? What 
will it avail to spend our time in lamenting 
over the want, poverty, and woe to be found 
among the half-clothed, half-fed, and neg- 
lected of our citizens? As long as public 
sentiment remains as it is, as long as our laws 
remain unchanged upon our statute books, 
as long as bar-rooms fill our land, just so 
long will this great tide of alcohol bear away 
on its bosom the money of the people, and 
leave behind human wants, and woes, and 
wails. This annual drain would bind our land 
in one unbroken network of railroad, tele- 
graph, and telephone lines, dot every hillside 
with school-houses and churches, erect char- 
itable institutions wherever afflicted human- 
ity groans under the burden of this curse, and 
make the blessings of education as free as the 
air we breathe. 

5 63 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

my friends, when will we be free from 
the curse of this monster that is laying waste 
to the home of peace and comfort, destroying 
the fondest hopes, blighting the most promis- 
ing germ of youth, and snatching the very 
bread from the starving infant's little hand 
all over this green land of ours? When? 
Well, in all I have said I have been opening 
up before you a plain, simple issue. It only 
remains to determine its practical application 
to ask you now on which side of it you will 
elect to stand. If I have told you only that 
which you know to be true, if I have stripped 
open before you a horrible putrifying sore 
in our social system, the stench of which is 
rife every day in your nostrils, what then? 
As factors of public sentiment, aye more, as 
sovereign American voters, responsible for 
your citizenship to your neighbor, to your 
own conscience, to God, what are you going 
to do about it? The Anti-saloon League, the 
Prohibitionists, and the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union are holding up a great 
remedy for this great evil, this cancerous, 
64 



Belshazzab's Feast. 

sloughing sore in our social system and body 
politic. Will you accept it, or will you reject 
and spurn it % The question is seriously per- 
tinent, it is awfully solemn ; you may try, but 
you can't dodge it ; you can't silence it or com- 
promise with it. It is a ghost that will not 
down at your bidding. In a life-and-death 
grapple between right and wrong, between 
virtue and vice, between honest manhood and 
besotted debauchery, between home and the 
saloon, there is no foothold of neutrr.1 ground. 
If intemperance is an evil, if the licensed 
dram-shop is a curse, if drunkenness is a fear- 
ful leprosy disseminating its infection among 
our neighbors, breaking the hearts of our 
women, and perpetuating itself in our off- 
spring, you can not escape your obligation 
as good and true men to array yourself openly 
against it. I state the proposition boldly. I 
defy contradiction. As honest, fair-minded 
citizens you must come out squarely against 
this evil, or you must boldly deny that it is 
an evil at all. If you admit the horrible truth 
of all I have tried to tell you, your conscience 
65 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

will point out the plain path of duty. To shun 
that path of duty is to give the lie to stubborn 
facts that everywhere confront and confound 
you. Is n 't that plain, and is n 't it true ? Has 
either one of our two great political parties 
ever enunciated a platform in which this li- 
cense curse has not been provided for? Has 
either one of them ever dared to nail a banner 
of Prohibition as large as your hand to its 
party masthead? Alas, no! They openly 
stand for the saloon, and we know it. We do 
not follow them in the dark. They stand for 
licensed debauchery, for licensed poverty, for 
licensed crime and madness, for the right to 
make men demons, wives widows, and to im- 
poverish innocent little children, all in strict 
accordance with legal statute. 

my friends, I see men before me who 
for honest conscience' sake would fight and 
die at the polls, if need be, to right some po- 
litical wrong, and yet whose consciences are 
strangely, morbidly seared and senseless to 
this temperance question. I can understand 
how they may honestly divide and differ on 
66 



Belshazzar's Feast. 

questions of tariff and finance and other eco- 
nomic questions of political policy, but upon 
this great moral issue, in regard to which all 
good and true men are in theoretical accord, 
I shudder at the practical repudiation of 
manly responsibility. I see philanthropists 
spending their labor and money in a conscien- 
tious effort to advance the public welfare, and 
yet they will vote to perpetuate this public 
curse. I see good men professing to abhor 
drunkenness and despise the saloon, and then 
go to the polls to encourage the drunkard and 
license his ruin. I see fathers rearing young 
boys, toiling day by day to mold them into 
fitting stamina for the coming generation, and 
yet voting on a mere quibble of personal lib- 
erty of party fealty to pave every step of 
their progress with licensed temptation. I 
have stood by the polls and seen members of 
the Church, professing to reverence God and 
love their fellows, with whisky ballots in their 
hands, and the blood of their neighbors on 
their heads. And I stood aghast with wonder 
and amazement that it could be so. But I 
67 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

have placed the issue before you, and I leave 
it with you* You will severally decide accord- 
ing to your own consciences. Personal lib- 
erty or party fealty on the one side; duty, 
that sublimest word in the English language, 
on the other; debauchery, poverty, cruelty, 
crime on the one side ; integrity, self-respect, 
manliness, and virtue on the other. The li- 
censed dram-shop, with its misery and shame, 
on the one side; the safety, sanctity, and 
sweetness of home on the other. Good men, 
true men, Christian men, I call upon you to 
come out on the side of duty, virtue, and 
home, and work and vote to wipe out this ac- 
cursed, iniquitous, legalized rum-traffic. 
Won't you do it? 

And now, in conclusion, to the poor inebri- 
ate let me say that there is still hope for you. 
The Lord Jesus Christ this evening stands 
ready and willing and able to save the poor 
drunkard, and the saloon-keeper, too. Jesus 
said, "In My Father's house are many man- 
sions. I go to prepare a place for you." He 
has prepared a place for you and for me. A 

68 



Belshazzab's Feast. 

house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens, whose builder and maker is God. 
And through and by His atoning blood every 
man, woman, and child in this world can, if 
they will, enter that heavenly mansion, and 
live forever. I thank God for this great sal- 
vation, offered to all the world without money 
and without price. 



69 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BLOT ON OUR CIVILIZATION. 

As delivered at Bethlehem Presbyterian 
Church in Philadelphia, Pa., and at Han- 
son Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, 
N.T. 

71 



THE BLOT ON OUR CIVILIZATION. 



>> 



The cause of temperance, my friends, is 
a cause which should need no argument. It 
is a cause which commends itself to the favor, 
to the sympathy, and to the interests of every 
individual member of society. It appeals to 
a man's reason and judgment, to the welfare 
of his present, to the safety of his future, and 
no man, be his position what it may, can af- 
ford to be insensible or indifferent to such 
appeals. He may excuse himself to his con- 
science, he may compromise with the prompt- 
ings of duty, he may even beg the question 
of moral obligation, but he can not take issue 
against it. Doubtless there is no man before 
me to-day who would not prefer, and vastly 
prefer, that his son should grow up to be a 
sober man, that his daughter should become 
the wife of a sober husband, that the neigh- 
bors and friends around him, his judge, his 

73 



Bundick's Lectures. 

legislator, his lawyer, his physician, his mer- 
chant, his friend, his servant, the men gener- 
ally who share his confidence, and serve him 
in any and every capacity, should be men of 
the very strictest sobriety. Is it not so? I 
challenge any member of this audience to in- 
stance the case of any man who has rejected 
temperance and prohibition because it was 
not a good and safe investment. And the 
abandoned drunkard himself looks down with 
contempt upon a debauched companion; his 
whole nature revolts, the instincts of human- 
ity recoil before the picture of his own beastly 
excesses when once he has been brought to 
confront them. And the liquor dealer, the 
man whose business it is to cater to the appe- 
tite of the poor victim and dupe, rarely 
reaches that stage of professional success 
separable from sentiments of disgust. 

And thus you see, my friends, that the- 
oretically considered we are all temperance 
people, however practically some of us may 
deny the fact that the cause which I am here 
to represent this evening is a cause very 
74 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

closely allied to every man's interest, that it 
is a cause which is as near and dear to your 
hearts as it is to mine. Theoretically we are 
a temperance people, but practically we are 
a nation of drunkards. This is a paradoxical 
assertion ; but paradoxical as it may seem, it 
is a self-evident truth all the same. "Who 
doubts it? We are a Church-going people. 
We pay every year one hundred and fifty mil- 
lions of dollars for Church expenses. W T e pay 
one hundred and seventy-five millions for 
public education, over three hundred millions 
for bread, and over nine hundred millions for 
meat. But we pay more than a billion per 
year for liquor. As a nation we pay almost 
as much for our grog as we pay altogether 
for our churches, our public schools, our 
bread, and our meat. Eum is the seal and 
pledge of our social friendships, the solace 
of our lighter hours, the lethe of our sor- 
rows, a boasted pillar of our national reve- 
nue. Our statesmen clink their glasses over 
the bar-room counter, our political franchise 
is a commodity bought and sold with the 
75 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

paltry price of a glass of whisky. Our stat- 
utes are steeped in wine, and sometimes, and 
(I am sorry to have to say this) that some 
of the members of some of our Churches will 
sometimes uphold and defend the dram-shop. 
What is wrong? 

Now I am not here, my friends, to raise 
an issue with the drunkard. I would rather 
turn away from the picture. It is too sad 
and pitiable for words of reproach. The 
curse of God, the loathsome leprosy of the 
twentieth century is on him, and drunk or 
sober now, he is henceforth a miserable wreck 
of God's noblest work, a spectacle that stirs 
our disgust, that shames our humanity, that 
cries aloud for pity. I saw him the other day 
staggering along the street, the dust of the 
bar-room floor was clinging to his clothing, 
the fumes of debauchery were in his breath. 
But let him alone. God has cursed him ; why 
should I? No, I am not here to condemn and 
abuse the poor fellow who in the flush of his 
dangerous self-confidence, perhaps in the 
very flower of his youth is bartering away 
76 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

to-night over some bar-room counter his- man- 
hood, his ambition, his talent, his soul to the 
service of a pitiless tyrannical master. It 
may be your boy, it may be mine. Some- 
body's boy, wayward perhaps, but still bear- 
ing in the lines of his youthful face the tender 
grace of a mother's training and a mother's 
love. He is all unconscious of his danger, 
blind to the crumbling verge beneath his feet. 
God knows that I have nothing in my heart 
for him but the agony of a great love and pity 
beyond my power of language to express. 

I am not here, my friends, to pick a quar- 
rel with the dram-seller, the man whose busi- 
ness it is to deal out the poison, to break down 
the barriers of moral self-restraint and self- 
respect, to educate and fit his victim's body 
and soul for ruin in this world, and hell in 
the next. Why should I? He is your servant 
and mine, no better and no worse than his 
masters. 0, but you say you are not to be 
classed with a liquor-dealer; you want your 
son to grow up to be a sober man, you want 
your daughter to become the wife of a sober 
77 



Bundick's Lecttjbes. 

husband, you want sober men to share your 
confidence and serve your business interests, 
and so does the dealer. You will admit that 
the world would be better off and happier if 
there wasn't a drop of liquor in it. And so 
does he. I never saw a dram-seller or a 
drunkard in my life who would n't cheerfully 
admit it. Well, in what respect, then, do you 
differ from him as a theoretical temperance 
man, except as your agent, created and li- 
censed for the work, he is doing the public 
bidding? Let us look at the situation 
squarely. Let us accept the facts as they are. 
Our government wants revenue. The State 
valued the public virtue, the peace and happi- 
ness of her citizens, and the dealer bought and 
paid for them. Has n't he a right, lawful and 
equitable, to the use and enjoyment of his 
purchase? Why should I stop to crush with 
my heel this natural outgrowth of a depraved 
and polluted popular sentiment, this fungus 
that sprouts up spontaneously and inevitably 
like a deadly miasm in the dank atmosphere 
of our social and political environments? 
i78 



"The Blot on Oue Civilization. ' ' 

no, my friends, let us be honest with 
ourselves ; let ns be consistent with the dealer. 
If there is any drunkard here, pitiable victim 
of an overweaning self-confidence, even a 
dram-seller, I bid him welcome. I have no 
quarrel with him, only a feeling of pity very 
nearly akin to disgust. I am not here to sum 
up all the guilt, and suffering, and crime, and 
madness bequeathed to poor humanity by his 
business and hurl them at his head. He has 
only an individual share with us in a national 
crime and a common responsibility. Let him 
sit down with us in peace. I once made a 
speech by invitation from the doorsteps of 
a dram-shop, the bartender and his boon com- 
panions interested and respectful listeners. 
The fact is, the rum business is simply a great 
co-partnership concern, in which the active 
partners are the State, the flesh, and the devil. 
The silent partners are the sober people, and 
too often members of our Christian Churches. 

My friends, stand up and deny it, any of 
you who can. 0, but you say stop. You tell 
me that I am carrying the argument too far, 
6 79 



Bundick's Lectures. 

that I am compromising with the evil, excus- 
ing the drunkard, condoning the crime of the 
dealer, that I am breaking down the line of 
distinction between the temperance people 
and the drunkard. Not at all. Will any of 
you point out this dividing line? Will any 
of you dare attempt it? Well, let us see. 
Here is a man who boasts that he was never 
drunk in his life. He abhors drunkenness ; he 
would n't employ a man in business who pat- 
ronized a dram-shop. But he takes a glass 
of beer or whisky whenever he is tired or 
cold. To that extent he is himself a patron 
of the dram-shop. He is giving aid and com- 
fort to the business; he is lending his influ- 
ence in behalf of the decency, respectability, 
and beneficence of alcoholic poison as a bever- 
age. The subtleness of the man's power for 
evil has never been measured, and never will 
be in this world. Well, where will you place 
him? Then here is another. He has no appe- 
tite for strong drink. He has no pity for the 
weakness and cowardice of a man who can't 
take a drink and go home sober. A little good 

80 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

whisky is useful to have in the house. He sets 
out the decanter to his friends when they call. 
He wouldn't dare allow his own son to join 
him or his guests in a social glass; but he 
is n't exactly so particular about your boy or 
mine. They ought to be able to take care of 
themselves. Well, where will you place him? 
Then, here is another; he is awake to all the 
evils of intemperance. He wouldn't allow a 
drop of liquor in his house. He would dis- 
own his son if he saw him patronizing a dram- 
shop. But he owns a corner store. It is true 
a groceryman used to occupy it ; but a liquor- 
dealer came along and offered him a dollar 
more per month for it. Of course, he is not 
responsible for the business done there. So 
the dealer pays the rent. "A man must look 
out for himself in these hard times; a man 
who does n't provide for his family is worse 
than an infidel." True, conscience says that 
in a certain sense he has become a partner 
in the traffic. But he readily retorts, "Am I 
my brother's keeper?" Well, where will you 
place him? But here is another, a good old 
81 



Bundick's Lectures. 

Christian brother. He boasts that he never 
touched a drop of liquor in his life, and never 
will. He wouldn't rent a house for the sale 
of liquor. Not he. Why, he sold a lot of 
ground once, and he had a condition inserted 
in the deed, that "if liquor was ever retailed 
there, then the obligation conveying the title 
should be henceforth null and void. ' ' He sits 
twice every Sunday in his family pew in the 
"Amen" corner, for he is diligent on the 
"word." For many years he has heard the 
awful Word of God declare that "wine is a 
mocker, strong drink is raging." Well, 
surely here is a man who is uncompromis- 
ingly grounded in his convictions, one man 
whose attitude can not be mistaken. But 
wait. There was an election over there some 
time ago, and the no-license issue had crept 
into the canvass, and some one told him that 
the legislative candidate of his choice was the 
representative of the saloon element. That 
the power of the dram-shop was at his back, 
that he was obligated to use all the weight 
of his ability to defend and perpetuate the 
82 



"The Blot on Oue Civilization." 

evil. They said : ' ' We are fighting for prohi- 
bition now, fighting to close those saloons, 
fighting for the safety of our boys, fighting in 
defense of onr women, fighting for humanity, 
for God; we are voting as we pray." "0 
yes," said this good old man. "But all my 
life I have stood for the nominee of my old 
party. I know that my man is not what I 
would like for him to be; he is not a clean 
man. And I am a temperance man, you all 
know that; but I can't leave my old party it 
seems, no matter who they put on the ticket." 
Well, where will you place him? 

my friends, will you dare attempt to 
draw this line when it shuts out the Amen 
corner of the church, and sometimes even the 
pulpit, with the dram-seller and the drunk- 
ard, when Christian piety will lock hands 
with drunken blasphemy, and members of the 
Churches will wrap their white robes about 
this monster fiend, this arch enemy of our 
race, the devil's best friend and God's worst 
enemy? And yet, my friends, this line is 
often drawn. God of nations, can we wonder 
83 



Bundick's Lectures. 

that Thy face is so often turned away from us, 
that our prayers come back to us void and 
empty, that the heavens are brass to our 
cries? The blood of untold victims cries to 
Thee from the ground, the prayers and tears 
of innocence and dependence are daily rising 
up before Thee as a memorial. When wilt 
Thou bear Thy strong right arm for swift 
and speedy vengeance on Thy people ? Come, 
friends, let us understand each other, let us 
look at the situation squarely, let us get out 
from behind the victim and the dupe, the 
manufacturer and the dealer, to confront our 
own individual responsibility to God and hu- 
manity. 

Theoretically we are a temperance people, 
but practically we are a nation of drunkards. 
Well, what do you theoretical temperance 
people propose to do to meet the situation? 
I cheerfully accord you honesty of conviction. 
You agree that this drink-evil is the unpar- 
alleled crime of the twentieth century. But 
what will you do about it ? Honest conviction 
involves a sense of responsibility, of active 
84 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

duty. The recognition of a public danger 
must inspire you as a good citizen with wis- 
dom and courage to confront it. But how will 
you do it? Some of you doubtless maintain 
that temperance effort should expend its 
force in the attempted reformation and cure 
of the drunkard. I recognize your conten- 
tion as one of the popular placeboes with 
which the public conscience is often soothed. 
Drunkenness, you say, is a disease, an ex- 
pression of inherent weakness, of morbid ap- 
petite, or of moral depravity. You propose 
to cure the disease by the application of such 
influences as tend to redeem and upbuild char- 
acter, and which we sometimes call moral 
suasion. If you are not a temperance re- 
former yourself, it may be that you counte- 
nance the work by your influence, perhaps by 
your money and even by your prayers. You 
argue that society and the State should accept 
the burden of its drunkards, as it does of its 
lunatics and indigent sick. You are willing 
to pay your share of the taxes. Very well, 
let us accept your view for a moment. Only 
85 



Bundick's Lectures. 

let me ask how many victims you propose to 
cure. 

Near my father's homestead years ago 
stood an old tenement occupied by a large 
colored family. One of the children fell ill 
of consumption, and ultimately died of the 
disease. And then another was stricken, and 
another, and another, until the last member 
of that large family was buried. Medical 
skill was invoked in vain to save the victims. 
Every effort was put forth to locate and ex- 
terminate the source of infection; but how- 
ever the bacteriologist of our later day may 
explain it, every family that went to live in 
that old tenement began to furnish new vic- 
tims for the greedy destroyer. Finally some 
one said : ' ' There is a curse hanging over this 
old building; it is a public menace; it must 
be torn down." And they razed it to the 
ground. 

I have often thought of that old death- 
trap, brethren, when I have stopped to esti- 
mate the earnest but futile waste of philan- 
thropic effort expended by society and the 
86 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

Church to redeem and cure our drunkards, 
and with what result? How few, after all, 
are saved. I may make a bold assertion, 
but I challenge successful refutation when I 
declare that the proportion cured is scarcely 
greater than the proportion rescued from the 
grasp of that other deadly scourge of our 
civilization, consumption itself. There is in- 
deed, to my mind, a striking and startling 
parallel between these two fell destroyers of 
human life, the same insidious, treacherous 
beginning in both, the same nattering cheat- 
ery of delusive hope, the same covert but re- 
lentless march to the end, in spite of all that 
skill and friendly interest and tender affec- 
tion can interpose. Our doctors tell us there 
is an early stage in tuberculosis, when the 
disease may sometimes be arrested. That a 
mature and vigorous constitution will some- 
times keep the deadly culmination at bay for 
years. That the poor victim in tender, san- 
guine youth often gallops, as it were, to the 
grave. They tell us, too, the disease is prone 
to relapse. That the germs, once planted in 
87 



Bundick's Lectures. 

the lungs, the tendency to recurrence is never 
uprooted. That the victim rescued from its 
grasp must live on at best in the very shadow 
of doom. Our vital statistics prove tfaat it 
heads the list of human mortality, that it is 
responsible for more than ten per cent of 
death in our race. And so the very name of 
this disease has become not only a reproach 
to our science and a synonym of despair to 
our healing art, but a word of common terror 
that blanches the cheek and chills the heart. 
But, my friends, there is not one of these 
morbid phases that you have not seen illus- 
trated time and again as manifestations of 
that moral and physical pathology known as 
the drunkard's disease. The same insidious, 
deceptive symptoms mark its onset. The eye 
may even brighten, and the cheek glow with 
a hectic flush of deceitful vigor. It is the 
occasional social glass that, like the little tick- 
ling cough, strikes no note of warning. But 
wait; the seeds of development have been 
planted gradually, perhaps imperceptibly. 
The danger creeps on as noiselessly and 
88 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

stealthily as the midnight assassin stealing 
into the chamber of unconscious slumber. 
Mother, it may be your boy that lies there, 
or mine— our hearts idol, wrapped in the 
deep sleep of a fancied security, to which 
there comes no warning dream of danger. 
Poor mother, you may have crept there a 
guardian angel, as you have done time and 
again, impelled by that strange sense of solic- 
itude only born of a mother's anxiety and 
tender care. But you see no danger; your 
boy sleeps. It may be that the fumes of the 
disease are even now in his breath; but the 
smile of unconscious innocence playing on his 
face lulls anxiety and soothes alarm. God 
keep my boy safe, is the prayer of your 
mother's heart, and you, too, turn away and 
sleep. But the steady, stealthy, noiseless 
step creeps on and on. God ! will that boy 
wake in time ! Who will save him before it is 
too late? if something would only fall and 
jar him out of the slumber of his fancied se- 
curity, if only the gleam of the assassin's 
knife would flash across the vista of his 
89 



Bundick's Lectubbs. 

dream. If only the fire-bells of conscience 
would clang out and arouse him to his peril. 
Come, my theoretical temperance friends, 
you say drunkenness is a disease. What are 
you doing to save the young men around you ? 
Perhaps a hundred or more stricken with an 
infection that will during this year sweep into 
eternity its annual death-rate of one hundred 
thousand victims. Here lies one victim in the 
curable stage of this dread malady. You 
might save him now ; but next year it may be 
too late. Are you going to wait until the poi- 
son has laid hold of his vitals, crushed out 
his manhood, burnt its way into his soul, and 
then take him up at last, a hopeless, incurable 
wreck, to defy and shame your best efforts 
to reclaim and save— is that what you pro- 
pose to do? 0, but you tell me again that I 
am carrying the argument too far. You are 
not willing to admit that drunkenness is as 
fearful a malady as that to which I have com- 
pared it. You say you read the papers, you 
read the records of our vital statistics ; it is 
only now and then that you hear of a death 
90 



"The Blot on Our Civilization. ' ' 

from drunkenness. But ask your physician 
to strip from his death record its smoother 
technicalities, and tell you how often the cer- 
tificate would read in cold English, "Died 
from strong drink. ' ' He says there is always 
an essential cause of death, and often a con- 
tributing cause. For instance, here is a death 
from pneumonia ; strong drink was the essen- 
tial cause, the pneumonia was the contribut- 
ing factor. Here is a case of dropsy, another 
of heart failure, and another of Bright 's dis- 
ease, and so on, all falling by strict interpre- 
tation of morbid causation under the head 
of strong drink. Here is a poor fellow who 
died wretchedly in a hovel of exposure and 
hunger ; but he died from strong drink. An- 
other who perished in a mad-house from 
frenzy and exhaustion. Another who fell in 
a bar-room from the knife of a murderer. 
Another who dropped down from a bullet that 
crashed through his brain from his own hand. 
Another strangled on the scaffold, or 
scorched and stiffened by the lightning bolt 
of the death-chair. They all died from strong 
91 



Bundick's Lectures. 

drink. Step with me a moment into this aris- 
tocratic mansion where crepe hangs from the 
the door-knob. How chill is the silence and 
gloom inside? The late master of the house 
lies here, a leading merchant of the town, 
whose life's ledger was closed with a sudden 
snap yesterday, and the account sent on to 
be balanced in the judgment. He was a suc- 
cessful man of business and a popular citizen; 
he entertained well, kept the best stock of old 
liquors in his house, may have rented a family 
pew in the church. But had not gone to bed 
sober for several years. The doctors said 
1 i he died of apoplexy superinduced by intense 
business application." But tear away the 
flower-wreaths, lay aside the grave clothes, 
and with the dissecting scalpel of cold truth 
go down to the secrets of the autopsy. Yes, 
here are plugged arteries and ruptured veins 
and blood-clots; but beyond and beneath it 
all, what? The glaring evidences of a path- 
ology that discounts the death certificate 
and the newspapers, that tells all the whole 
pitiful truth. The man died of strong drink. 
92 



"The Blot on Our Civilization.' ' 

He died drunk. Ah ! what if we always dared 
to call things by their right names ? 

I was shocked not long ago to hear of the 
death of an old friend who was at one time 
my near neighbor. We had drifted apart for 
some years; bnt another friend told me all 
the sad and pathetic story of his life. After 
marrying, he became a bartender. He was 
genial and popular. It was his stock in trade. 
Later he had been overtaken by delirium tre- 
mens, and the dealer had turned him off. The 
dealer didn't want, of course, a man about 
his bar who saw loathesome snakes crawling 
among his bottles, and fiends grinning out 
from behind the wine-casks. The poor fellow 
tried to reform, and ultimately got a new po- 
sition; but it was always the old story over 
again of "snakes and fiends," until at last 
the liquor business closed its avenues against 
him. Well, what has life to offer to such a 
pitiable, miserable wreck of manhood? What 
is all the world when its boundaries are nar- 
rowed to the confines of an arena where hu- 
man frailty is to fight out for all its days a 
93 



Bundick's Lectures. 

hopeless combat with frenzied thirst? One 
night he drove to a neighboring town, went 
into a bar-room, and spent the last cent in his 
pocket ; then kindly bade his old companions 
good-night, and placing himself in a vehicle 
drove to the Bay shore, and taking a seat on 
the trunk of an old tree near the water's edge 
sent a bullet crashing into his brain. They 
found him there next morning. I chanced 
to be there, and saw him with my own eyes. 
I will never forget the sad and horrible spec- 
tacle. His old but well brushed Prince Al- 
bert was buttoned neatly over his breast, his 
necktie carefully adjusted, his hair smoothly 
brushed and parted, as a man quietly and de- 
liberately prepares himself for a journey. 
The incoming tide had stolen up during the 
night, and lightly scattered some floating 
grass over the gruesome spectacle, as if to 
hide the pitiful tragedy from the eyes of God 
and men. "Died from a bullet wound made 
by his own hand," the coroner's inquest said. 
He died from strong drink. 

Well, there is another class of theoretical 
94 



"The Blot on Our Civilization. ' ' 

temperance people who apply to their con- 
sciences another popular placebo. They have 
voted to maintain the dram-shop on every oc- 
casion that has presented itself; but they 
have compromised with the situation by abus- 
ing the dealer and piling vituperation on his 
business. I have been rather harshly crit- 
icised sometimes as a temperance speaker by 
this class of temperance people, because I 
have failed to cajole the popular sense by 
hurling anathemas at the dealer. It is no 
part of sound logic or temperance policy, my 
friends, to lay this soothing unction on the 
public conscience. I would rather irritate, 
and inflame and tear open the moral sensi- 
bilities of the public heart until it aches and 
bleeds with guilty remorse. I am no apol- 
ogist for the dram-shop ; but we may as well 
accept the fact once for all, that the liquor 
business is a legal business, and a respectable 
business as far as law and social recognition 
can make it so. Even some of the members 
of our Churches, as I have shown you, will 
sometimes tolerate and sanction and foster 
7 95 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

it. There is an old maxim of polemics which 
declares that whatever is lawful is right. 
Law is at least power and might, and the ap- 
peals of justice and expediency will not al- 
ways stay its hand. And so, sir, the State 
has not only appraised the dignity and peace 
of your city; but, alas for you, poor mother, 
it has set a price on your son's manhood, 
measured the bottomless depths of your 
mother's love and mother's agony, and even 
estimated the priceless value of a human soul. 
It has all been figured up in the sum total 
of a license tax, and, little or much, the dealer 
has paid it. The receipt is posted up in his 
bar, behind his muddlers and his painted bot- 
tles. He has the authority and majesty of 
the State to breed discord in your community, 
to impoverish your neighbors, to rob you, poor 
mother, of your boy and murder him before 
your eyes, to break your heart, to damn a hu- 
man soul. We may as well accept the fact 
squarely, and adjust ourselves as best we can 
to abide its horrible truth. Well, is all this 
right, or is it wrong? There is the issue. 
96 



"The Blot on Ouk Civilization." 

You can't misunderstand it, you can't evade 
it, you can't compromise with it, you can't 
argue it down; it is either right, or it is 
wrong. If it is right, then let us cease all 
this waste of temperance effort. Let us 
throw down our arms and open our gates to 
the despoiler. Let our statesmen come out 
openly and boldly for rum, as they do for 
tariff, gold, and silver. Let our physicians 
proclaim that alcohol is the water of life. 
Let our ministers tear from the Word of God 
all the awful judgments pronounced against 
the drunkard. Let us go on to weave this 
curse into the warp and woof of our civiliza- 
tion until the serious destiny of human life 
is turned into a very carnival of Bachanalian 
revelry. Why not 1 

Ah, but if it is wrong ! What if it is wrong ? 
If it is wrong, then show me the plummet that 
will sound the depths of its infamy. If it is 
wrong, then this license curse is the crowning 
climax of wrong, compounded from the ag- 
gregate of all human wrong. It is the gaunt 
skeleton of poverty, the demon of crime, the 
97 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

fiend of madness, the ghastly ghost of death, 
all in one hideous, composite whole. More 
hideous for the sunlight of civilization that 
shines upon it, more heinous for the moral 
cowardice of a Christian nation that tolerates 
and defends it. If it is wrong, what then? 
I come to appeal to your citizenship, to your 
conscience, to your manhood for help to right 
this wrong. What will you do? Don't tell 
me that temperance people are all fanatics. 
Do you know of any great revolution in sci- 
ence or morals that was not wrought out by 
fanatics? Don't tell me that the little band 
of temperance and prohibition workers is too 
slender and weak to cope with its giant 
enemy. Brethren, this little band has gone 
forth to battle armed with the sling of God's 
providence, and in it the smooth pebble of a 
mighty truth that will yet conquer in spite 
of the mailed armor, the shield, and the sword 
of the giant, and it concerns us more to be 
on the side of virtue and right, than on the 
side of mere brute force. Conscience, aye, 
God Himself demands no more of you or me 
98 



"The Blot on Our Civilization." 

than one man's duty. But the fearful respon- 
sibility of that demand can not be evaded. 
We are standing upon the threshold of a new 
epoch in the history of the world. The rosy 
light of another century has burst upon the 
horizon of the ages. What wonderful feats 
of human progress, what achievements in art 
and science, what great strides in social ref- 
ormation will mark this new epoch of time? 

" Not in vain the distance beacons, 
Forward, forward let us range ; 
Let the great world spin forever 
Down the ringing grooves of change." 

Ah ! but will this hideous, heinous wrong, 
this brutal blood-stain, "This Blot on our 
Civilization, ' ' mar the triumphs and glories 
of this new dawn? Shall we transmit this 
curse to the generations that are to follow 
after us? God forbid! may God in His 
mercy lead this nation in the paths of duty, 
wisdom, justice, and mercy for His name's 
sake ! 



99 ' LofC 



CHAPTER IV. 

OLD THEORICXJS. 

As delivered at the Young Men's Christian 
Association in Atlanta, Ga., and at Cal- 
vary Baptist Church, Washington, D. C. 
101 



OLD THEORICUS. 

My Friends, I am here to-day, under a 
solemn sense of duty, to lay before you some 
facts and figures bearing upon this temper- 
ance question, together with certain natural 
inferences and deductions to be drawn there- 
from, trusting and believing that the plain 
and solemn lessons of truth will carry to your 
minds a force of eloquence and power of con- 
viction far beyond the scope of any thought 
or language which I may possess. And I 
promise to be as brief as the nature of my 
subject will possibly admit. The history of 
alcohol as a beverage makes up not only a 
curious, but a highly instructive study. It is 
not, as you are aware, a substance normally 
existing as a product of creation, but is the 
result of a chemical process known as vinous 
fermentation. In other words, the result of 
103 



Bundick's Lectures. 

the presence of some fermenting influence 
upon certain and various substances contain- 
ing grape sugar. It seems to have been 
known, nevertheless, in some shape or other 
from the earliest periods of the world's his- 
tory, though the art of distillation, by which 
it is extracted from fermented liquors, was 
probably first known to the Arabians about 
nine hundred years ago. It is a curious cir- 
cumstance that alcohol in the Arabic was a 
fine impalpable black powder, with which the 
ladies used to paint their eyebrows and eye- 
lashes, in order to increase their beauty, 
somewhat like some of the young men of our 
own day, who sometimes take what they call 
a "horn," you know, just before venturing 
upon the society of young ladies to whom 
they wish to become agreeable. No doubt 
the Arabian women thought it increased their 
beauty, and I dare say the young men of a 
later generation derive a certain sense of 
increased magnitude and importance from its 
effects. Some of them go so far as to paint 
their noses and to color the whites of their 
104 



Old Theoricus. 

eyes with this remarkable cosmetic, and thus 
equipped doubtless they feel prettier too, or 
richer or greater, or in some way or other 
better than before. Hence the unfortunate 
habit. From Arabia it was introduced dur- 
ing the twelfth century into Spain and 
France, though its use for three hundred 
years seems to have been strictly confined to 
remedial purposes. It was not until the fif- 
teenth century that men began to use it to 
any extent as a beverage. During the six- 
teenth century an old gentleman by the name 
of Theoricus wrote a treatise upon its won- 
derful sanative power, in which he says, "It 
sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it light- 
eneth the mind, it quickeneth the heart.' ' 
And thus you see, judged by its immediate 
effects, men began to think that it was a rem- 
edy for all the ills that flesh is heir to, and 
that it would not only cure diseases, but act- 
ually prevent them. They began to take it, 
not only in sickness, but in health ; not only in 
weakness, but in robust health; not only in 
decrepit age, but in vigorous youth. It pro- 
105 



Bun-dick's Lectures. 

duced a burning sensation in the stomach, and 
they took it to keep them warm ; it evaporates 
readily and thereby absorbs heat, and they 
took it to keep them cool. There was no 
phase indeed, whether of sickness or health, 
to which its application did not appear a 
timely and invaluable blessing. Hence the 
common habit of drinking a health— a habit, 
you know, which obtains to this day. Then 
which it was fatally taught that friendship 
and favor could not find a holier or more 
praiseworthy office. 

But three hundred years, my friends, of 
cruel, bitter experience has passed away. 
The use of alcohol, grounded upon the max- 
ims of old Theoricus, has increased and ex- 
tended until the whole civilized world has 
tested the fatal doctrines which he ignorantly 
taught. And with what result 1 The science 
of the nineteenth century, investigating under 
the broader light of advanced knowledge, pro- 
nounced this common beverage to be what? 
A subtle and diffused poison, a poison like 
opium, arsenic, or even strichnia itself. A 
106 



Old Theoeicus. 

poison which, however slowly and insidiously 
it may creep towards the inner sanctuary of 
life, feeding almost insensibly for years, it 
may be, upon the vitals, is nevertheless a 
poison as deadly as that which summer after 
summer in those doomed cities of the South 
has reveled in the very atmosphere of horror 
and destruction. Do you doubt it! Why, 
my friends, if the human body were a trans- 
parent machine into which you could look, as 
you look upon the face of a friend, you could 
read for yourselves the startling truth of the 
assertion. Long before you saw the red nose, 
the bloated cheek, and the bloodshot eye, you 
could see the finger-prints of the demon 
clutching at the vitals within. You could 
trace the delicate tint of the stomach, goaded 
by daily contact with this irritant poison, 
gradually changing the hue of a healthy 
child's cheek for the threatening flush of be- 
ginning inflammation. Nature, you know, 
has laws which man dare not trample upon 
with impunity. And science tells us that an 
irritant applied to a sensitive texture de- 
107 



Bundick's Lectures. 

mands an increased flow of blood to the parts. 
That these little, delicate vessels, under the 
influence of this irritant poison, gradually 
begin to enlarge and spread out like the 
branches of a tree in a thousand ramifica- 
tions. The surface has become inflamed, and 
eventually begins to grow black. The blood 
has stagnated there. The system suffers be- 
cause it is not nourished, the organs become 
diseased, the very fountain of life is poisoned 
at its source. But is this all? From the 
stomach we learn that this poison is taken 
up by the absorbents and carried to the blood, 
and thus circulated through every portion of 
the body. But, mark you, as it was alcohol, 
a subtle, irritating poison, in the stomach, so 
it is alcohol in the brain, in the heart, in the 
blood-vessels, in the nervous system, in the 
emunctories, in every tissue and fiber of the 
whole animal economy. You take the blood 
of a drunkard from his head, his hand, or his 
foot, distill it, and you have alcohol. Dr. 
Kirk, of Scotland, you remember, in dissect- 
ing the body of a young man who had died 
108 



Old Theoricus. 

in a fit of intoxication, took a fluid from the 
brain distinctly sensible to the smell as Scotch 
whisky. Applying a candle to it, it took fire— 
the lambent, blue flare, he says, characteristic 
of the poison itself playing for some seconds 
upon the surface of the spoon. 

But why need we dwell longer upon these 
scientific details! Some of you, my friends, 
have stood by the open grave of more than 
one of these sad and pitiable victims. You 
have seen for yourselves the awful culmina- 
tion of these hidden events. Science, you 
know, may have covered up the harsher name 
of that fatal malady under her smoother tech- 
nicalities, friendship have hidden its pitiable 
record from the eyes of the world, and love 
garnitured that last resting-place with 
flowers. But standing there by that open 
grave you have seen for yourselves, and real- 
ized that, after all, it was but the sad, un- 
timely ending of another career, duped by 
a dangerous self-confidence, and murdered 
at the hand of strong drink. And standing 
there by that open grave, did you pause to 
109 



Bttndick's Lectures. 

ask yourself the question— if your influence 
had ever been lent in the promotion of that 
sad and terrible event? You who twine a 
wreath of hallowed friendship about this poi- 
soned cup, and then lift it to your neighbor's 
lips, pledging a health so soon to end in a 
drunkard's death? If so, conscience must 
have told you that just so far you stand guilty 
of that terrible deed; aye, guilty of all those 
dark woes of want and misery, which like 
sleuth-hounds may follow for years in the 
track of the widowed mother and her orphan 
children. Science has pronounced alcohol a 
poison. But what has the accumulated ex- 
perience of the past three hundred years to 
testify of its record? A distinguished writer 
has said that the disease occasioned by it dur- 
ing that period has been by far more destruc- 
tive than any plague that has ever raged 
throughout the land, more malignant than 
any pestilence that has ever desolated our 
suffering race. 

Why, my friends, it has been carefully 
estimated from facts extensively circulated 
110 



Old Theokicus. 

throughout the country, that alcohol has dur- 
ing the last fifty years cut off in the United 
States more than thirty millions of years of 
human life, and ushered more than a million 
of souls uncalled and unprepared into the 
presence of their God. And what shall we 
say of that darker record of crime, and want, 
and misery, and despair, which is only writ- 
ten in the pages of that great register which 
has never yet been open to human inspection? 
A record beyond human estimate and human 
comprehension. The wail of sin and misery, 
the doomed agony of a fate more cruel than 
death itself has surely reached up to heaven, 
if it has not rent the bowels of the earth. 
Have we not learned a lesson in all these 
three hundred years? A lesson written in 
lines of sin and in letters of tears and of 
blood. This poison has not only burnt into 
our stomachs, but burnt into our very souls, 
circulated not only through our veins, but 
sent its maddening current through all the 
avenues of our body politic, and laid its black 



111 



Bundick's Lectures. 

and withering curse even upon our unborn 
future. Why then? 

And the question is a fearfully solemn 
one, my friends, why in the face of all these 
terrible truths to which no man is a stranger 
do we yearly pay out as a nation the round 
sum of one billion two hundred millions of 
dollars as the price of so much suffering and 
sin? Why do we yearly lay upon the altar 
of this modern Molock the blood of more than 
one hundred thousand human beings? Why, 
in spite of all these bitter experiences of the 
past, do our wise and good men shut their 
eyes, our statesmen seal their lips, our Chris- 
tian men and women fold their hands, our 
temperance organizations languish and die, 
and the civilized world, gorged with its bitter 
lessons of experience and shame, move on in 
the giddy dance of a drunken delirium, why? 
The question is a fearfully solemn one, my 
friends, so awfully solemn I believe that some 
of us are learning to skulk it. We will not, 
because we dare not look it squarely in the 
face. And this is an age of popular progress ; 
112 



Old Theoricus. 

it is almost wonderful to contemplate the wis- 
dom and prudence expended by mankind in 
grappling with social evil and public danger. 
Find a leak, always excepting this whisky 
leak, in the treasury of a State or a nation, 
and lo ! the strong arm of the law is invoked 
to set watch and ward there. Let but the 
advance guard of an epidemic threaten our 
shores, and the whole country will bristle with 
sanitary measures. Set up a rendering estab- 
lishment upon your own premises any of you 
for purely legitimate and beneficent purposes, 
and let somebody with a fastidious nose go 
and complain that you have established a 
public nuisance, and an officer will soon tap 
you on the shoulder and compel its abate- 
ment. There are laws in the country relating 
to the purity of milk, laws for the protection 
of dumb animals, for the suppression of im- 
moral and obscene literature, mail laws, and 
what not. The country may almost be said 
to have contracted a mania for popular self- 
defense, and all of these laws are good enough 
as far as they go. But they do not go far 
113 



Bundick's Lectures. 

enough. Why, here is a leak in the public 
treasury of one billion two hundred millions 
of dollars per year. Not exactly a stupen- 
dous loss to the country. Would to heaven it 
were only that ! But a vast sum expended in 
just so much misery, degradation, and death. 
And here is an epidemic not threatening our 
shores, but riding high carnival in our very 
midst, at our very doors, in our very homes. 
An epidemic to which the combined malig- 
nancy of the burning typhus, the loathsome 
smallpox, the cholera of the East, or the yel- 
low fever of the South can only furnish a fit- 
ting comparison. And yet, here in this en- 
lightened age of popular progress and of gos- 
pel light, the great vox populi, the voice of 
the people, which is as the voice of a god, is 
still repeating the same old maxims of Theori- 
cus, "It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, 
it ligtheneth the mind, it quickeneth the 
heart." Well, somebody says, "The whisky 
is a good thing in its place, and that however 
poisonous it may be, it won't hurt you if you 
let it alone." Well, a rattlesnake won't for 
114 



Old Theobicus. 

that matter. But they are not very good 
things to have around. But I deny the as- 
sumption. You can't affect my community, 
without affecting me as a member of it, can 
you? You can't affect the business of my 
community without affecting my business, 
can you? 

And let us take this matter a little closer 
home. I see many ladies in the audience here, 
and it is very likely that some one of you has 
a little boy at home. If I were to tell you 
that that little boy would grow up to be a 
drunkard, would die a drunkard, and fill a 
drunkard's grave, you would despise me for 
daring to hint at such an idea. Why, every 
night you take him down at your knee and 
teach him his little prayer. You are every 
day planting the seeds of morality and virtue 
in his little heart. You are teaching him to 
shun the evil and choose the good, to grow 
up to be a good and noble man worthy of the 
name he bears, worthy of his mother's care, 
his mother's love, and his mother's pride. 
But in a few more years he will take his stand 
115 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

upon the threshold of manhood. And what 
then? "Why, right over there in your neigh- 
borhood, it may be in sight of your very door, 
a man will be sitting in wait for him, whose 
business it is, whose policy it is, whose bread 
and meat it is to give him this poison. I 
do n't say that your boy will ever get in there, 
but I do say the chances are that he will, and 
if he does he may come back to you with a 
smiling face, and with the same tender ]ove 
in his heart for his old mother. But he will 
never be exactly the same boy again. Never 
in this world. The poison will have gone 
down into his stomach, and burnt its way 
into his soul. He will have taken his first 
step in the career of a drunkard, and who 
shall say where it is to end? He will have 
started out on that road that will lead in this 
year one hundred thousand men to the alms- 
house, two hundred thousand to the State's 
prison, and one hundred thousand to drunk- 
ards' graves. Will he stop there? I say the 
chances are only increased against him. The 
policy of the dealer is at stake, the charm of 
116 



Old Theoricus. 

gay companionship lingers about the place, 
the pledge of friendship has woven such a 
garland about that poison, it is so kindly hu- 
mane, that it seems almost divine. There is 
a dangerous subtleness, a venomous fascina- 
tion lurking in the intoxicating glass which 
no chemist has ever yet analyzed, but against 
which no strength of character, nobility of 
purpose, or piety of heart is a sure and abso- 
lute safeguard. I say the chances are that 
he will go there again, that he will drink down 
his time, drink down his credit, his character, 
his ambition, drink down the very hoardings 
that you had worked your fingers sore to lay 
up for him, drink down his good name, and lie 
down somewhere at last a moral and physical 
wreck, a very curse and libel on his race. 

My friends, this is no fancy picture; 
haven't you seen the pitiable illustration of 
it all? I have not drawn upon my imagina- 
tion for these fearful details. I have only 
briefly sketched the downward career of a 
friend in my mind. A man, perhaps, of the 
finest intellectual taste I have ever known, 
117 



Bundick's Lectures. 

from whose brow I have wiped the sweat- 
drops of an agony too deep to find utterance 
in words as he lay struggling and praying in 
an agony of remorse to quell the demon of 
his appetite for strong drink. He died not 
long ago a drunkard and an outcast in a for- 
eign land, a self exile from a comfortable 
home, a beautiful wife, and a bright little boy, 
and none of us who loved him can to this day 
mark the spot where he fills a nameless drunk- 
ard's grave. 

And must our children, too, run the gaunt- 
let of this terrible danger? Ah, my friends, 
there is a fearful wrong somewhere, a wrong 
which the vaunted science and boasted prog- 
ress of this age should begin to grapple with, 
a fearful sense of blame which cries aloud 
in the name of common humanity for remedy 
and redress. And I pray you, my friends, 
do not lay the burden of this blame at the 
door of the poor victim and dupe. I protest 
that the danger to society never did, and 
never will, lie at the door of the abandoned 
drunkard, be his social position what it may. 
118 



Old Theoricus. 

T believe that no man ever started out with 
the firm, deliberate purpose to end his career 
in a drunkard's grave. And I believe that 
no man ever reached that end who had not: at 
some point in that career awakened to a sense 
of the danger. The awakening had come, if 
it had come too late. And how little you may 
know, my friends, after all, of those earnest, 
impotent struggles when the high-born and 
manly resolve, time and again laying its des- 
perate grasp upon some rallying point of 
awakened conscience, has wrestled in vain to 
stem the tide. How little you may know of 
the firm, set purpose born perhaps in the 
agony of a father's heart by the death-bed 
of a little child, it may be ; a purpose doomed, 
alas! for no fault of noble resolve, no lack 
of bitter anguish, to end in shameful, pitiable 
defeat. 

Ah, my friends, it may be that behind this 
great army of one hundred thousand human 
beings, yearly tramping onward to the pale 
realms of shade, there is left an unwritten 
history of heroic struggles, of desperate ef- 
119 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

forts, of manly valor of which even the 
scarred and veteran warrior might well be 
proud. Friends, husbands, fathers, you who 
have silently wept tears of unseen remorse 
at the remembrance of some hasty, unkind 
word that found its way to a patient, loving 
heart, you whose bosoms have bled over the 
little toe or tiny finger that your heel unwil- 
lingly and unknowingly crushed among the 
playthings on the carpet, think of the keen, 
bitter anguish of that man whose own hand 
has wrecked the warmth and cheer and sanc- 
tity of his own fireside, whose own heel has 
trodden down the love of a tender, patient 
wife and the safeguard of prattling, depend- 
ent innocence. We hear of the touching ap- 
peals of temperance orators, of the eloquence 
of a Gough, a Woolley, or a Bain swaying 
the heart with an irresistible influence ; but I 
know, my friends, whereof I speak, and I 
know that the grandest temperance appeal, 
the most touching eloquence thai ever burnt 
its way into the heart of any victim of this 
vice, is the yearning cry of his own inner con- 
120 



Old Theoricus. 

science for strength. Strength to resist the 
evil. And are these the people, these dupes, 
these pitiable victims of a moral miasm the 
men at whose doors yon would lay the burden 
of this responsibility, this awful guilt ! Sent 
out into a world reeking with the poisoned 
breath of this pestilence, steaming up from 
its corner dram-shops, floating in the per- 
fumed air of its ball-rooms, lurking in the 
grasp of social kindness, sparkling in the sun- 
light of a genial festivity, thrust to their lips 
by the hand of neighbor and friend as the 
boasted pledge of health and hallowed friend- 
ship ? Is it any wonder that the subtle, ven- 
omous poison should creep in unawares, and 
taint the blood and blight the soul with a 
curse f Shall these plague-stricken and dying 
victims of a widespread moral depravity be 
charged with the guilt of their own ruin and 
their own blood? 

Be not deceived, my friends. It may be 

that the poor, pitiable drunkard, the victim 

of an appetite which has long ago baffled the 

last despairing effort of the will, may yet rise 

121 



Bundick's Lectures. 

in judgment above his stronger brother when 
human frailty and human influences shall be 
weighed in the balances of Divine justice. 
And I pray you, my friends, do not lay the 
burden of this blame alone at the door of the 
dealer, the man who for a sordid love of gain 
caters to the appetite of the victim and dupe. 
I am not here to defend the man who sells, or 
the man who manufactures rum. Not by any 
means. Neither am I here to soothe the pub- 
lic conscience with their wholesale abuse. I 
believe it is no part of sound reason or tem- 
perance policy to do so. I believe the moral 
sense of the community, the great conscious- 
ness of the people has too long hidden itself 
under this convenient subterfuge. There is 
a moving power behind these men, into the 
hands of which they are the agents and in- 
struments of evil. They are the natural and 
spontaneous outgrowth of a social depravity 
favorable to their developments and congen- 
ial to their existence. Parasites, if you 
please, thriving and fattening upon a corrupt 
tone of the popular moral sense, and you need 
122 



Old Theoeicus. 

not doubt that whatever may be said against 
them so long as the opportunity remains, the 
sordid love of gain will fasten upon it, so long 
as money is to be made in the traffic or manu- 
facture there will be found men to make it. 
And I want you to remember that it is a 
legal business, and as far as the forms of law 
can make it so an honorable business, and 
when the licensed dealer here in your city 
takes your boy into his bar-room and robs 
him of his time, his money, his ambition, his 
honor, and turns him out a confirmed drunk- 
ard, I want you to remember that it was all 
done strictly according to law, and when he 
has picked out one by one all the little tender 
virtues you had planted in that boy's heart, 
blasted his last hope of reformation, and 
thrown him out to die the death of a pitiable, 
miserable drunkard, a sacrificial victim mur- 
dered at the hand of this modern Molock, I 
want you to remember that it was a strictly 
legal murder, and that the price of your boy's 
blood and his soul has gone straight to the 
public treasury. Why, don't you remember 
123 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

the thrill of sickening horror that ran through 
the whole civilized country some time ago 
when the rumor reached us that a savage 
chieftain over in one of the islands of Mada- 
gascar had butchered a number of his young 
women, that their blood might be used in 
cementing the walls of a new council house? 
And what of that? Wasn't it only another 
form of legal murder? The savage chieftain 
wanted blood; our statesmen want revenue. 
What of the blood of these one hundred thou- 
sand human beings in America, unless it be 
that civilized murder is only the more inhu- 
man still? He has been licensed, licensed to 
sell poison, licensed to turn loose the brute- 
passion of humanity upon innocence and de- 
pendence, licensed to rob homes of all that 
makes home happy, licensed to wreck and 
murder both body and soul. Merciful heav- 
ens ! who in this land of civilization and gos- 
pel light, that poor mother may well ask, is 
delegated with the fearful right to license 
murder ? Do n 't you know, mother, do n 't you 
know? Why, it is in many of the States a 
124 



Old Theoricus. 

man who sits robed in the ermine of judicial 
dignity, holding the scales of human justice 
in his hands, the representative of law and 
order, the avenger of oppression and wrong, 
the defender of innocence and dependence, 
the very personification of justice and right. 
O my friends, whatever other relief the 
law may grant or deny us, let us hope, let us 
work, let us pray, let us vote that it will at 
least relieve us from the hollow mockery, the 
bitter sarcasm of laying at the feet of justice 
the blood of our fellow beings. And don't 
forget, if you please, that the judge who 
grants the license is only the agent and in- 
strument in the hands of a higher power ; he 
is only the representative of the law. And 
what is law? It is your voice and mine at the 
ballot-box ; aye, the sum total of all the voices 
that make up popular sentiment for good or 
for evil. Come, friends, it is time we had 
gotten out from behind the victim and dupe, 
the manufacturer and dealer, to confront our 
own individual responsibility to God and hu- 
manity. If the teachings of science, if the 
125 



Bundick's Lectures. 

lessons of bitter experience, nay, if a lifelong 
observation of suffering and crime around 
you has taught you that alcohol is a poison, 
a poison for both body and soul, then why do 
you fold your hands and turn your backs 
upon this labor of love, soothing your con- 
science with the fratricidal unction, "Am I 
my brother's keeper!" 

The man who shelters the enemy of his 
country is a traitor. The man who looks on 
coldly at a murder without raising his arm 
or his voice to prevent it, is himself a mur- 
derer. What, then, are we more than drunk- 
ards if, standing here as integral parts of our 
social world, factors and representatives of 
public sentiment, aye, as Christian voters, we 
simply fold our hands in selfish innocence and 
bid the evil go on? My friends, it is time we 
had awaken to the peril and duty of the hour, 
that the great public heart had begun to throb 
with a sense of patriotic responsibility. I 
lay before you to-day a great issue of public 
justice and right, backed by a pitiful appeal 
for mercy rising up all over this land. From 
126 



Old Theoeicus. 

your mad-houses, from your prisons, from 
wretched hovels, from pitiful children, and 
from tender women. What will you do ! Do 
not delude yourself with the thought that 
such an issue of justice, right, and mercy 
will down. Though the world may frown 
upon it, the Christian men of this nation must 
face the responsibility. I ask you, Christian 
men, fathers of erring sons, brothers of weak- 
ened brothers writhing in the grasp of this 
fell despoiler, I appeal to your manhood, to 
your patriotism, to your chivalry, to your 
Christianity for help to right this wrong. 
What will you do? The still small voice of 
conscience appeals to you, the cry of helpless 
dependence beseeches you, the tears of tender 
womanhood implore you, the awful voice of 
God demands you. But there will always be 
found a faithful few followers of the Lord 
Jesus. 

It is said that years ago in an old cathe- 
dral somewhere beyond the sea there was dis- 
covered up in the topmost nook of roof and 
tower and belfry an artist's studio. The 
9 127 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

thick dust of a hundred years lay undisturbed 
within it. But as the softened light stole 
through a little narrow window stained with 
the grime and smoke of the century past, it 
fell upon marvels of sculpture cut from the 
stone like living things, of flowers, of fruit 
and trailing vines, of lovely angels with 
folded wings, of pure madonnas, of saints 
with reverend heads at prayer, and all that 
is noble and beautiful in the art chiseled by 
the genius of a master hand in every trace 
and lineament. Who was the artist whose 
exquisite thought glowed in the lines, the 
poise, the grace of this exquisite work? The 
world never knew, the world never will know. 
It only knew that the grand old artist, hidden 
away up there in that nook, so far away from 
the eyes of men, so far above their censure, 
and above their praise, with the world spread 
like a painted picture beneath him, and the 
blue vault of the sky about his head, with 
earth so far, and heaven so near, he wrought 
his undying work for posterity. But time at 
last unveiled that hidden work and poured 
128 



Old Theoricus. 

these treasures into the lap of art. The 
grand old sculptor himself, all nameless and 
unknown, had moved, moved to a loftier 
studio in a grander cathedral. But the 
flowers that had bloomed, and the fruit that 
had ripened under the touch of his chisel, and 
the faces that had caught the fire and inspira- 
tion of his genius, these remained— the undy- 
ing and imperishable heritage of art and pos- 
terity. God bless our Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association! Like the old artist, its 
members are engaged in a work that will live 
when they are dead, and I bid you Godspeed 
in that work. The past has garnered sheaves 
in the track of your sickles ; but behold, the 
harvest before you is ripening for the reaper. 
The work is too noble, the sheaves too pre- 
cious, the reward too princely to require that 
I should cheer you on in the path of duty. 
What though the sunlight of life may have 
set for us all ere the task has been finished? 
You know as well as I, that the safest and 
sweetest pillow for the sleeping head, whether 
it be in the dreaming sleep of life, or in that 
129 



Bitndick's Lectures. 

dreamless sleep which in this world knows no 
waking, is the sublime consciousness and 
merit of a duty nobly and faithfully done. 
And your work will go on, doubt not, my 
friends, that even while you sleep other hands 
wielding your implements of toil will go forth 
into the shadowy haunts of vice and sin with 
a stouter heart and a firmer tread. The f oot- 
prints of your feet, the very impress of your 
labors will cling to the harvest-fields when 
your names will be forgotten. And in con- 
clusion, let me say to my unconverted hear- 
ers that the Spirit of the Lord Jesus is knock- 
ing at the door of your heart for admission 
to-day. Will you open that door and let 
Him in? 



130 



CHAPTER V. 

AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. 

Delivered at McKendree Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, Nashville, Tenn., and at 
Walnut Street Baptist Church, Louis- 
ville, Ky. 

131 



"AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP." 

You remember, my friends, that when our 
blessed Savior was preaching on the earth 
He was interrupted on one occasion by cer- 
tain Pharisees and Herodians with the in- 
quiry, "Master, is it lawful to give tribute 
to Caesar?" The Savior said, "Bring Me a 
penny," and when they had brought it He 
asked, "Whose image and superscription is 
this ? ' ' and they answered, ' ' Caesar 's. ' ' Then 
said the Divine Master: "Render unto Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
things that art God's." I have quoted this 
incident because I want to lay down the 
proposition, and prove it too if I can, that 
the service of the Government is a part of 
the service of God. That a good Christian is 
a good citizen ; that a man can not be a good 
Christian who is not a good citizen ; that we 
133 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

must render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's in order to render unto God the 
things that are God's. Now I am aware, of 
course, that the attempt to reconcile religion 
with practical politics may jar upon some of 
you as harshly discordant and even profane. 
It is becoming almost a fad to criticise 
preachers if they refer to politics in their 
pulpits. But here at least we have a striking 
example of the Divine Master, pausing in one 
of the grandest sermons He ever delivered 
to the world, to teach the people a practical 
lesson in political duty, ' ' Eender unto Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's." A solemn obli- 
gation in nowise inconsistent with, but a very 
part of the other command to render unto 
God the things that are God's. Unfortu- 
nately in these later times the science of prac- 
tical politics has passed as a proverb into bad 
repute, become a word of reproach almost 
malodorous in the nostrils of our civilization. 
Perhaps in light of the Divine teaching it is 
worth while to stop and inquire why it is so ; 
to trace the serious responsibility home, even 
134 



' ' American Citizenship. ' ' 

if it leads us to the doors of the Christian 
Church. For how far practical Christianity 
may be negatively accountable for the de- 
pravity of practical politics, even by simply 
withholding Christian influences from the 
practice of applied government, is a legiti- 
mate and gravely serious question, which 
every Christian may take home to himself. 
Obedience to government, loyal subjection to 
the powers that be, is not only a Divine man- 
date, but a duty taught by the example of the 
Master Himself. You remember that when 
He and Peter passed on one occasion into 
Capernaum, Peter was waited upon by the 
tax-gatherer with the inquiry, "Doth not 
your Master pay tribute?" And Peter un- 
hesitatingly answered, ' l Yes. ' ' There was no 
question in the disciple's mind as to his Mas- 
ter's sense of obedience to the civil law. The 
Savior Himself might have stopped to quib- 
ble that He had no money, to urge that Caper- 
naum was His adopted home, and the native 
home of Peter— that they were tribute free. 
But He said to Peter : ' ' Lest we offend them, 
135 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

go tliou to the sea and cast an hook, and take 
the fish that first cometh up ; and when thou 
hast opened its mouth thou shalt find a piece 
of money; that take and give unto them for 
Me and thee." What a sublime lesson for 
the citizenship of the world ! The Prince and 
Potentate of Heaven and earth bowing sub- 
missively to the tribute laws of the little vil- 
lage of Nahum, that He might shun even the 
appearance of rebellion against its govern- 
ment. 

My friends, I am tempted to believe that 
the lack of practical Christianity in practical 
politics is fast becoming the bane of applied 
government in this country. I am afraid we 
are forgetting the precepts and overlooking 
the example of our Divine Master; that our 
Christian people are tacitly yielding the reins 
of government into the hands of the venal 
and vicious. And yet the ballot is not only 
the high privilege, but the bounden duty of 
every good citizen. Our ancient fathers who 
projected this government, as a government 
of the people, for the people, and by the peo- 
136 



"American Citizenship. ' ' 

pie, evidently embraced in their fundamental 
theory the implied domination of the wisdom, 
patriotism, and virtue of the Republic. Else 
a popular government must needs be a delu- 
sion and a reproach. If in this day of public 
schools and newspapers and Christian influ- 
ences the country is not growing wiser and 
better, there is no hope for self-government. 
But I am optimist enough to believe that if 
our Republic ever fails, the fault will lie not 
so much with the activity of the ignorant and 
vicious, as with the indifference and apathy 
of those who know their duty and do it not. 
I confess I have little patience with the Amer- 
ican citizen who says: "No, I never vote; 
politics is too corrupt for a clean, self- 
respecting man to be mixed with. I can not 
afford to besmirch myself in its dirty pool. 
I leave elections to ward politicians, who 
revel in their pollutions and fatten on their 
corruptions. And I am really afraid, my 
friends, this man belongs to a large, and even 
growing, class of our citizenship, a class 
whose pharisaical precepts are hardly less 
137 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

dangerous than those of the anarchist himself. 
Because, if elections have become corrupt, 
how can they be reformed until a better class 
of voters dominate the polls; if the pool of 
politics is dirty, how can it be cleansed until 
there is a fountain of honesty and Christian 
principle infused into it? The venal voter, 
the citizen whose franchise may be bought 
for a moiety of money or a glass of common 
whisky, is apt to be early and sometimes often 
at the polls. Your vote, my good friend, is 
sorely needed to neutralize his— to kill it, as 
the politicians say. Your silence, therefore, 
in effect, counts a half vote with his ; your in- 
fluence is going by default for evil. You are 
not rendering to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's nor to God the things that are God's. 
If you are too clean and pure, my friend, to 
be a politician yourself, get down into the pool 
of Bethesda and trouble its waters, that the 
political lame and halt and blind may step in 
after you and be healed of their political in- 
firmities. Do n't try to escape from the re- 
sponsibility of your citizenship; you can't do 
138 



' ' Ameeican Citizenship. ' ' 

it. But then it is no less true that our respon- 
sibility involves the exercise of our best judg- 
ment in the public service; demands the full 
measure of our highest conceptions of justice 
and right. Citizenship is not only a high 
privilege, but a solemn trust. Don't forget 
that. It is too solemn a trust to admit of 
compromise or trickery. Are we, then, as 
good citizens and Christians awake to the 
serious business of our sovereignty as Amer- 
ican citizens ? Society professes to abhor the 
bribe-taker; but how many of us take bribes? 
I am not limiting the inquiry to the rounder 
who sells out for a glass of beer, or confining 
it to the gamut of political corruption rising 
up to the legislator whose price may vary all 
the way from fifty to five thousand dollars. 
The principle, of course, is the same. Though 
this sort of bribery has now become so com- 
mon, we have almost come to accept it as a 
sort of commodity like stocks on the Ex- 
change. But there are other bribes. For in- 
stance, bribes of office, bribes of political and 
financial favor, bribes of personal gratitude, 
139 



Btjstdick's Lectuees. 

bribes of blackmail, corrupt compacts of 
dicker and deal that bide in dark corners from 
the eyes of law and justice, all of them 
smeared over with the same political corrup- 
tion as it oozes from the putrefying sores of 
our body politic. Then, there is the bribe of 
party fealty, the most common and there- 
fore the most dangerous of them all— you 
must stand by your party on principle. God 
save the mark, though you sacrifice every 
other principle of your Christianity, your cit- 
izenship, and even your manhood ! Well, who 
of us are measuring up to the full standard 
of American citizenship, rendering to Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's? 

My friends, I am afraid when we come 
to gauge our practical politics by the stand- 
ard I have attempted to erect, we will begin 
to comprehend our actual phase of political 
corruption not limited to the ward politician 
and healer, because while the actual influence 
of the machine politician may be positively 
bad, the negative co-operation of the larger 
140 



"Amekicast Citizenship." 

class may be equally, and even more perni- 
cious. Now this is a strong and serious asser- 
tion, and yet I state it boldly as a truth. The 
class of our citizenship openly contending 
for what they know to be evil is not to be 
compared in numerical force, in moral weight, 
or even in public responsibility with the class 
of so-called good citizens and Christian 
voters negatively consenting to and tolerat- 
ing the wrong. In other words, I believe the 
most dangerous class of our citizenship is 
made up of negatively good men, embracing 
many members of the Church who hold in 
their hands the balance of power to right our 
political wrongs, and who shrink from or 
shirk their duty. That is my contention. Let 
us take a familiar and practical example. 
Perhaps there is hardly one of you who does 
not agree that the most serious affliction of 
the public welfare is the Government's foster- 
ing care of its liquor-traffic. I need hardly 
argue the truth and force of that assertion, 
for you accept it as a sort of abstract fact 
that you do not deny, though you may find it 
141 



Btjndick's Lectukes. 

inconvenient and impolitic to admit, and yet 
the evil goes on by default in spite of your con- 
victions. The political conscience has to be- 
come blunted and irresponsive, the Christian 
conscience distorted and depraved. The evil 
has gotten a firm grip on our politics, and 
even on the Church. But we look on passively 
while it weaves itself into our social life, 
dominates our politics, corrupts our officials, 
and even shames our civilization. What is 
wrong? Why, simply that we have been 
brought under the domination of an evil in- 
fluence that we have ceased to resist. We are 
no longer citizens of a free government, 
wielding a free ballot. Mr. Cleveland may be 
President, or Mr. Boosevelt may be Presi- 
dent, but Alcohol is king. There is the naked 
fact staring you in the face and defying con- 
tradiction. You may boast of your Bepubli- 
can institutions, of your American sover- 
eignty, of your free government, but you are 
the subjects of a monarchy. Alcohol is king. 
High up above your State Government, above 
your Chief Magistrate of the Nation, King 
142 



' ' American Citizenship. ' ' 

Alcohol sits enthroned a solitary paradoxical 
and monstrous example of a Bepublic, a gov- 
ernment of the people dominated by a king. 
Well, a king you know by a so-called Divine 
right may be a tyrant if he will. A tyrant 
is a despot who grinds his subjects with trib- 
ute laws, crushes them with sore and griev- 
ous service, breaks the bodies of jnen and the 
hearts of women. Well, is King Alcohol a 
tyrant? Does he grind his subjects with 
tribute laws, does he crush them with sore 
and grievous service, does he break the bodies 
of men and the hearts of women? I ask your 
learned financiers. They have figured up the 
annual amount of his popular levy at the 
round sum of one billion two hundred millions 
of dollars, an annual per capita of about four- 
teen dollars on every man, woman, and child 
in the country. How is that for a tyrant's 
levy I Your churches cost you about one hun- 
dred and fifty millions, but the tax your Di- 
vine Master puts upon you for the support 
of His service is a pitiful sum compared with 
the tyrant's tax. Your schools cost you about 
10 143 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

one hundred and seventy-five millions, but 
that will not begin to compare with the ty- 
rant's tax. Your bread costs you three hun- 
dred millions and your meat nine hundred 
millions, but the combined cost of your bread 
and your meat will not begin to measure up 
to the tyrant's tax. Nay, the cost of your 
churches and your schools, your bread and 
your meat all put together will barely foot 
up to the one billion two hundred millions, 
the annual levy demanded by King Alcohol. 
And he collects every dime of it, too. Do n't 
forget that. There is no escape from the 
tyrant's levy. His tax-gatherers sit at the 
street corners and at the crossing of your 
county roads. They are licensed and pro- 
tected by your State and national laws, and 
over their counters the tribute is gathered 
in by day and by night, in nickels and dimes, 
in quarters and dollars, from the pockets of 
the rich and the pockets of the poor, from the 
sleek and the ragged, from the gay and light- 
hearted, from the sullen and miserable, from 
tender youth and from tottering age. Some 
144 



"Amekican Citizenship.' ' 

walking in boldly with brazen, bloated faces, 
some sneaking in at the side doors, but all 
casting up a share of this vast round sum of 
one billion two hundred millions of dollars, 
the annual levy of the tyrant alcohol. Ah 
well, some of you say, " Thank God, I pay 
none of it. ' ' 

But wait, my friend, there is another col- 
umn in the tyrant's ledger. These same 
financiers tell us that alcohol is the father of 
crime, and disease, and want, and poverty. 
There is another stupendous array of figures 
written up against us, the cost of his crimes, 
the support of his jails and poorhouses, and 
hospitals, and hudlams, and penitentiaries. 
How about that column; who foots that 
frightful total? If you are a tax-payer, you 
are not tribute free, you can't escape the 
tyrant's tax; walk up and cash it down. But 
what of the tyranny of his service? Ask the 
poor, pitiable slave whose life is bound to 
that service. He is not far to seek. He 
passes your door every day. A few years 
ago he stepped upon the threshold of life in 
145 



Bundick's Lecttjkes. 

the full heirship of his God-given birthright, 
lithe, sinewy, strong on his legs, and buoyant 
with ambition and hope. See him now as he 
goes by. How sadly he has been changed in 
a few years ' service of his master ! His birth- 
right is gone, he shivers and totters as he 
walks, the dignity of conscious manhood has 
deserted him, and ambition and hope are 
henceforth for him but the vague, half -for- 
gotten dreams of his boyhood. The wife that 
came to his bosom but a few years back in 
the flush of her beautiful maidenhood, angelic 
in her tenderness, and divine in her trust, 
hides at home now in her poverty, a fading 
semblance of neglected womanhood. The 
little children, too, that God gave him to love 
and rear are but the toys and playthings of 
that destiny that overhangs the drunkard's 
home with its curse. Eeverence for parents, 
affection for wife, the God-implanted instinct 
of parental protection, even self-respect, all 
sacrificed to the service of a pitiless, tyran- 
nical master. Ask him if alcohol is a tyrant. 
my friends, the picture is sad as you see 
146 



"Amekican Citizenship." 

it; but let me tell you who have sounded all 
the infamous depths of that service, there is 
an agony beneath it all that the world knows 
little of and for which it wastes no pity. It 
sees in the poor victim only a moral leper 
to be cast out and shunned, rather than com- 
miserated and healed; to be condemned and 
execrated, rather than pitied and redeemed. 
But I tell you that nature abhors a vacuum 
in the human bosom as well as in the outside 
world. Do you think a human heart can be 
robbed of its reverence, its affection, its pa- 
rental instinct, and its self-respect, leaving 
only one empty void behind them? Ah no, I 
tell you no. When this tyrant had dragged 
all these God-man attributes out from that 
poor victim's bosom, he planted there instead 
the cruel canker of a remorse that is to live 
through all that man's life. A remorse that 
strong drink may feed, but never satiate. A 
remorse that is the very hell of conscience 
begun on earth. good people, I invoke your 
pity and your prayers for these poor victims. 
They are not always volunteers in the service 
147 



Btjndick's Lectukes. 

of their master ; they are too often conscripts 
of chance in the lottery of our boasted civil- 
ization and its popular customs. The lot may 
as well have fallen on your boy or mine. The 
tyrant whom we serve must have his recruits. 
They must be drafted from our streets, from 
our work-shops, from our schools and col- 
leges, even from our Sunday-schools and 
Churches, dragged, if need be, from your 
hearthstone and mine, and from the very 
arms of heart-breaking wives and mothers. 
I invoke your pity and your prayers for all 
these poor victims. They are bound to a hard 
service. There is no glory of achievement 
waiting for them, no distinguished honor or 
laudable promotion, no page of history to 
chronicle their deeds, no triumphant home- 
coming with brass bands and banners, no re- 
ward in this world or that which is to come. 
Woe, sorrow, contentions, babblings, wounds 
without cause, poverty and shame, these are 
the wages of the tyrant's service. 

my friends, where in all this world will 
you find a more pitiable object than an aban- 
148 



* ' Ameeican Citizenship. ' ' 

doned drunkard, bound to the service of a 
pitiless master, slighted and distrusted of 
men, apparently forsaken of God, shut in with 
his appetite and the remorse of his con- 
science. Ask him if alcohol is a tyrant. But 
does alcohol break the bodies of men and the 
hearts of women? Your statesmen tell us 
there are annually sacrificed to the service of 
this tyrant the lives of a hundred thousand 
of our citizens. A grand holocaust of victims 
that may well shock and sicken us with hor- 
ror. Why, consumption, that insidious and 
deadly foe of our race, that kills more human 
beings every year than all other diseases com- 
bined, exclusive of epidemics, pales in its rec- 
ords besides such figures. The ravages of a 
pestilence turned loose on a nation, the 
demon of war riding rough- shod over land 
and sea fail to keep pace with this tyrant in 
the carnival of death. Disease, hunger and 
want, madness, the bludgeon and knife of the 
murderer, the gibbet and death-chair of the 
law,— these are all his agents, and are kept 
busy in the service of King Alcohol. One 
149 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

hundred thousand victims tolled off every 
years in the tyrant's service, one hundred 
thousand recruits annually conscripted to fill 
the ranks. Ah, surely he breaks the bodies 
of men! But, alas! it seems to me the cruel- 
est blows of this monster fall at last on the 
heads of innocence and dependence. 

Civilization, my friends, has planted and 
nurtured in our bosoms a sentiment of chiv- 
alry that stands, and ought to stand, next to 
our reverence for God. The tender, sacred 
ties of wife and child and mother strike root- 
lets very deep into the human heart, and the 
strong arms of our manhood, like the boughs 
of the goodly cedar-tree, stretch out and bend 
down instinctively to shield and protect our 
innocent and defenseless, but somehow in the 
caustic irony of this tyrant's government his 
heaviest and crudest blows are aimed at our 
innocent women and defenseless children. It 
seems to me that somewhere up yonder there 
must be a record kept that our statisticians 
down here have never been able to reduce to 
figures, the record of cheated lives and broken 
150 



' ' American Citizenship. ' * 

hearts. Here is a sad, pitiable record that 
denes the scope of cold, mathematical figures, 
a record that will never be open to human 
inspection in this world. And yet, though no 
earthly census has ever yet attempted to col- 
late it, I think the all-seeing eye that notes 
the fall of the sparrow sees many tears that 
are otherwise shed unseen, and I doubt not 
they are all numbered up and the record writ- 
ten down somewhere in the great beyond. 

Just after my conversion, while visiting 
one of our Southern towns, a little girl 
brought me a request to see her mother. I 
had known the people several years before. 
The mother was a young woman then, a social 
favorite, and even a belle of her neighbor- 
hood. As I went along with the little mes- 
senger she told me her story. ' ' You see, sir, ' ' 
she said, "papa is in jail, and mamma 
thought you might help to get him out. They 
say he tried to kill somebody, ' ' and then with 
a pitiful little sob in her voice she added: 
"But papa was drunk, or he wouldn't have 
done it; only he is so often drunk now." As 
151 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

I passed into the dingy, untidy room where 
the family sat, I instinctively recalled the 
belle of other days, and I thought how dain- 
tily she would have lifted her skirts only a few 
years back to cross the threshold of such a 
home. But there she sat, now its mistress, 
bowed and squalid, the hard lines of her 
face had crushed out the last trace of its old 
beauty. Near her sat her aged mother, so 
frail she was scarcely more than a shadow, 
helpless herself, but clinging with that old 
deathless, motherly instinct to her helpless 
and needy child. Thank God, our mothers 
never forsake us ! Grouped around were six 
little children, pitifully sad and unkempt. 
They sat with serious faces and open, staring 
eyes as I talked. Poor little things, the sin 
of the father had descended upon the off- 
spring ! Every one of those children, without 
exception, bore the mark of some congenital 
deformity or affliction. The tyrant had not 
only set the seal of his curse upon that 
household, but had robbed the offspring at 
their very birth of the common heritage of 
152 



"American Citizenship." 

their birthright. As I sat there I recalled 
that the husband of the old mother, several 
years deceased, had died prematurely of 
strong drink; she, too, had been a drunkard's 
wife, and was herself a drunkard's widow. 
The father of the drunkard now lying in jail 
was himself a drunkard, and died drunk. 
And here sat the victims, two helpless and 
crushed mothers, and six pitiful little chil- 
dren, heirs of a curse that was to follow them 
from the cradle to the grave. 

my friends, this is only one case, so sad 
it may well make the heart ache! But how 
many of them in this broad land ! Where will 
you look that your eyes may not fall upon 
them? Alas! they are so sadly common, they 
have almost ceased to strike us with wonder, 
or to touch our hearts with more than a pass- 
ing throb of pity. You remember that when 
the light of British civilization was turned 
upon India, a horrible pagan rite in that dark 
land was suppressed by law. When the Hin- 
doo died his widow was not only compelled 
to light his funeral pyre with her own hands, 
153 



Bundick's Lectures. 

but to cast her body upon it, that after the 
frightful torture of a living cremation her 
ashes might mingle with those of her dead 
husband. I wondered as I sat there with that 
little group in the drunkard's home, why the 
boasted humanity of a civilized and Christian 
nation can shiver and revolt at a x Hindoo sut- 
tee, and yet condone with complacency the 
lifelong torture of the innocent victims in 
its very midst. Within a stone's throw of 
that miserable home lived a law-maker of 
that State. Directly across the street was a 
Christian Church. But here under the arms 
of the law, and in the very shadow of a Chris- 
tian Church, sat those two pitiful women in 
the suttee of a lifelong torture mocking the 
civilization of the age, and shaming its Chris- 
tianity. As I gazed upon those hungry, hag- 
gard faces, I said down deep in my heart, 
"As long as life gives to me a breath, I will 
raise my voice and my vote against this ac- 
cursed, iniquitous, licensed traffic." And 
here they sit all about us, disconsolate 
mothers, wives withering by desolate hearth- 
154 



' ' American Citizenship. ' ' 

stones, widows weeping over the graves of 
dead husbands and the wrecks of their own 
lives, innocent little children, for no fault of 
their own, robbed of their common birthright 
and thrown out upon the common charities 
of the world. What if all this pitiful record 
could be summed up in cold figures! What 
if I could pass before you as you sit here a 
panorama of the homes this tyrant has made 
desolate, of affections torn up and trodden 
under foot, of the hopes he has crushed and 
the hearts he has broken. Do you think you 
could sit there calmly and look on! I believe 
not. The scene would be more than human 
endurance could suffer. You are men of 
hearts. I believe you would rise up with 
swelling bosoms and choking throats to cry 
in your mad vengeance, Tear down the ty- 
rant's throne, we will do it or die! Ah! yes 
he breaks the hearts of our women. 

My friends, what sacrifices have we not 
made in the service of our tyrant master! 
Year after year we have poured out treasure 



155 



Btjndick's Lectukes. 

at his feet. We have clothed ourselves in 
poverty and shame to do him service, we have 
insulted law and order, and gone forth like 
wild beasts to trample upon every sentient 
impulse of manhood and self-respect. But 
all this has not been enough. "We have even 
brought our women and children, the tender- 
ness and love of our wives and sisters and 
mothers, and laid them, too, on the sacrificial 
altar of our king. Well, I ask you, Is he a 
tyrant or not? My friends, I beg to assure 
you that I am not overdrawing the picture, 
horrible as it is. I am simply following the 
records of cold facts and figures, facts and 
figures that have already passed into the his- 
tory of the dead century, to be judged here- 
after by the generations that will follow after 
us. These sad truths have grown so trite and 
familiar in our day they have almost ceased 
to strike us with wonder, or to awaken in our 
hearts more than a passing throb of pity, and 
yet I think in some future era of higher civil- 
ization and more aggressive Christianity the 
world will yet wonder, cheeks will pale, and 
156 



' ' Amekican Citizenship. ' 9 

Hearts will bleed over this terrible story of 
human history. 

Many of you have doubtless read the late 
popular fiction known as "Quo Vadis," por- 
traying the cruel reign of another tyrant 
more than eighteen centuries ago. You have 
followed the blood-curdling story with a quiv- 
ering sense of horror, shivered at its orgies, 
sickened at its inhuman bestialities, looked 
down with Nero upon its death struggles of 
innocent men and women, and even pitiful 
children, heard the gurgle in dying throats, 
and almost smelt the scent of hot human 
blood rising up from the pit. But you have 
followed that vivid portrayal with a vague 
redeeming sense of incredulity, that even in 
that dark age a tyrant could be so lost to hu- 
manity, could so glut himself with inhuman 
butchery. But take away the name of Nero, 
and put in that of this tyrant of the twentieth 
century, and will the picture be so greatly 
overdrawn? Midnight orgies, drunken revel- 
ries, brute passion turned loose like wild 
beasts, murder, crushed bodies and broken 
157 



Btjndick's Lectures. 

hearts. Are not all these among the pastimes 
of our modern Nero ? Alas ! no, my friends, 
I am not overdrawing the picture ; it is only 
shockingly true, and when another eighteen 
centuries has passed away, and another 
Sienkiewicz shall write up the dynasty of 
King Alcohol, the world will have to wonder 
again with the same sickening sense of horror 
and incredulity if it were ever possible that 
such things could be. Ah! but if Nero was 
a tyrant, a fiend incarnate in his dark pagan 
age; what is alcohol in the civilization and 
gospel light of the twentieth century? 

But, my friends, I must hasten on. What 
is the conclusion of the whole argument? 
More than a century ago your ancient fathers, 
despising tyranny and escaping from kings, 
laid here in this Western Hemisphere under 
the providence of God the broad, firm foun- 
dation of a huge monument to civil and polit- 
ical liberty. That base stands here to-day. 
Compounded now of more than twoscore 
huge blocks of solid granite, each fashioned, 
molded, and securely fitted by master build- 
158 



' i American Citizenship. ' ' 

ers, the whole cemented in one by the blood 
of patriot sires and patriot sons. It is a mag- 
nificent structure, rock-bound and rock- 
ribbed, firm as the foundation of the eternal 
hills. Kings have looked upon it and trem- 
bled. Nations have contemplated it in awe. 
Enemies have crumbled at its base. It is the 
fundamental law of the American Republic, 
the Government of these United States. And 
above it and resting upon it is a huge super- 
structure, majestic in its proportions, fash- 
ioned of many intricate parts, all wrought 
into one harmonious whole. Every stone that 
enters into that superstructure has been 
mined from the quarries of civil and political 
freedom, fitted and adjusted by the highest 
art of political handiwork, and every stone is 
an American ballot. Here stands this huge 
monument, symmetrical, majestic, the proud 
boast of the political architecture of this 
twentieth century, the wonder of the age, and 
of the whole civilized world. Ah! but high 
up above it all, propped and braced securely 
on the firm foundation of popular will, sits 
11 159 



Bundick's Lectures. 

the throne of King Alcohol. Above your 
President, above your Congress, above your 
State Government, above your civilization, 
above your Church, dominating your politics, 
grinding you with tribute laws, crushing you 
with sore and grievous service, breaking the 
bodies of your men and the hearts of your 
women ! There 's your modern Nero, King 
Alcohol, the Legalized Rum-power— behold 
him! Well, if Alcohol is king, and King Al- 
cohol is a tyrant— what then? 

Come, friends, we have gotten down to the 
issue; let us meet it squarely. If Alcohol is 
a tyrant, what then ? Shall we stop to quibble 
over personal rights and dispute about sump- 
tuary laws? Shall we waste time discussing 
the old economic issues of finance and tariff 
and protection— grave as they may be— while 
this tyrant sits up there grinding his vast 
annual tribute from our pockets? Shall we 
parley over the popular fads of colonial ex- 
pansion, with so much tyrannical bondage 
overhanging and crushing us at home? Shall 
we lavish all our interest and sympathy on 
160 



"American Citizenship. ' ' 

our boys in blue, fighting and dying for the 
flag in distant lands, and have none for our 
poor boys in poverty and rags at home, from 
whose staggering ranks a hundred thousand 
are falling year by year in the tyrant's serv- 
ice? Don't tell me that all the half-breeds and 
heathen of foreign islands must be conquered 
and assimilated and made happy under the 
flag, while ignorance and want and misery are 
sitting at so many hearthstones around you. 
Do n't waste all your compassion on the little 
brown men in our far-off Colonies, while so 
many of your own broken-hearted women and 
pitiful children are begging bread and shel- 
ter in your streets. Do n't— I pray you come 
out and meet the issue squarely like men. If 
alcohol is king, and King Alcohol is a tyrant, 
what then? Will you go on propping his 
throne with your American ballots; or will 
you rise up in the might and majesty of 
American manhood and drag the tyrant 
down? There 's the issue naked and plain. 
I hold it up before you. 

My friends, I am speaking to men who are 
161 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

tlie descendants of sires that pledged their 
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor 
in rebellion against tyranny. Your proud 
boast to-day of a free country and a free bal- 
lot is a blood-bought heritage, bequeathed to 
you, not only as a sacred heirloom, but as a 
solemn trust. You are free men by inherit- 
ance from worthy sires. If you are worthy 
sons stand up like men who are not afraid, 
and look this tyrant in the face. He is grind- 
ing you with tribute laws. Crushing you with 
sore and grievous service, breaking the bodies 
of your men and the hearts of your women. 
Well, if Alcohol is king, and King Alcohol is 
a tyrant, what then? And now let me ask 
you, my Christian friends, followers of the 
Cross and to conquer in the name of your 
Master, by that sign are you rendering to 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God 
the things that are God's? Or are you, too, 
propping the throne of this tyrant with your 
Christian ballots! Brethren, the question is 
a solemn one. Meet it as you will ; you must 
decide it for yourselves. I hold no man's 
162 



"Amekican Citizenship." 

conscience. But let me remind yon, brethren, 
that if only the Christian ballots in this land 
were torn from the base of the tyrant's 
throne, that throne would totter, fall, and 
crumble at your feet. It seems to me the re- 
flection is an awfully solemn one. Take it 
home with you if you will, and to-night when 
you go on your knees into the presence of the 
great Searcher of human hearts, let your con- 
science answer this awfully solemn question 
to Him. Well, I have finished the argument. 
I leave it with you. I have tried to place the 
issue fairly and squarely before you. Meet 
it as you will, you must answer it to the honor 
and credit of your citizenship as an American 
sovereign, to your conscience, to God. You 
may call all this argument the merest, flim- 
siest temperance cant, and your speaker a 
fanatical crank, but, brethren, the great sol- 
emn truth that lies under it will still stare 
up in your face and mine. 

But my friends, you who have waited 
and worked and prayed so long, be patient 
and strong and prayerful yet a little while 
163 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

longer. Here by the newly-made grave of 
the old century, already numbered with the 
dead ages of time, let us turn with new hope 
towards the eastern hills. Let us pray that 
the rosy light of this new dawn may be 
spanned by a bow of promise, painted with 
a splendor and glory the dead century never 
knew. And God grant that the bells that rung 
in the new century may have rung the death- 
knell of this tyrant and his reign, that some- 
where in the early sunburst of this new era 
there shall break forth the glad anthem, 
"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen," 
henceforth "Peace on earth, good will to 
men," and it seems to me the morning stars 
will once more sing together, the angels of 
heaven take up the chorus, and all the ends 
of the earth shout for joy. Amen, amen, and 
amen. 



164 






CHAPTER VI. 

THE INQUEST. 

Delivered at Franklin Street Methodist 
Church, Baltimore, Md., and at First Bap- 
tist Church, St. Augustine, Florida. 

165 



THE INQUEST. 

My fkiends, when the last chapter of this 
old world's history shall have been written, 
and the bound volume handed back to the 
Author of our being, I doubt not that the 
blackest thread running through all its pages 
will be the story of the legalized rum-traffic. 
The chisel of the sculptor and the brush of 
the painter have bequeathed to us grim ideals 
of war and famine and pestilence, but they 
have never yet attempted to measure up to 
the impersonation of the demon of strong 
drink. The genius of earth stands aghast 
and with palsied hand in the sheer contempla- 
tion of such a picture, for, my friends, more 
horrible than the butcheries of war, more hid- 
eous than gaunt famine, more fetid and loath- 
some than the slimy trail of the pestilence 
will be the grand sum total of woe and misery 
167 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

bequeathed to mankind by this arch fiend of 
our race. It is said that the traveler wander- 
ing amid the ruins and relics of Pompeii is 
struck with almost speechless wonder at the 
civilization of that buried people. Here two 
thousand years ago a city sat in the lap of 
superb magnificence, rich in all that wealth 
and art and taste could supply. The deft cun- 
ning of its artisans, the skill of its architects, 
the genius of its poets, painters, and sculp- 
tors, the elegance and refinement of its people 
have never been surpassed in all these later 
centuries. And yet here amid all this there 
lingers on every hand the relics of a licentious 
bestiality before which the head bows and 
the heart sickens. Here in the midst of grand 
temples and marble palaces and magnificent 
baths there crumbles a huge pile on whose 
arena human forms were crushed in the jaws 
of wild beasts to make a holiday, and doomed 
gladiators bared their breasts to gorge with 
hot human blood the savage instincts of their 
own race. Does the heart almost stop ap- 
palled in the horrible contemplation of such 
168 



The Inquest. 

an antithesis? 0, but you say that was a 
pagan race, upon whom the newly-risen sun 
had not yet beamed! The world is twenty 
centuries older now. This is the age of a 
higher civilization, sunned in the noontide 
glare of gospel light, of peace on earth, good- 
will to men. This is an era of science, of 
statesmanship, of philanthropy, of Chris- 
tianity. We can afford to look back with only 
a vague, wonderless horror, that like another 
Sodom or Gomorrah Pompeii should have 
suddenly sunk under the withering curse of 
Jehovah. 

But 0, my countrymen, are we not weav- 
ing in with the warp and woof of our later 
history a black thread which, to the eyes of 
coming generations, will dishonor our science 
and statesmanship, discount our boasted phi- 
lanthropy, and shame our Christianity? Let 
us stop and look this monster evil soberly and 
squarely in the face. Our science says that 
alcohol is a poison, slow but insidious and 
deadly. Our statescraft has declared it to 
be the most expensive, demoralizing, and de- 
169 



Bundick's Lectxjees. 

grading canker that Has ever gnawed at the 
vitals of our body politic. Our philanthropy 
has charged upon it the bulk of our crime, 
poverty, and suffering. Our Christianity 
cries out against it as the sum of all evils, the 
devil's best friend and God's worst enemy. 
And yet as a nation how closely we are hug- 
ging this horrible antithesis of the twentieth 
century, twined like the coils of a serpent 
about our social system, enthroned as the 
very arbiter of our political government, 
shielded under the protecting aegis of the 
law, a huge, rapacious, insatiate Moloch, it 
demands inexorable tribute of the people. 
Year by year we lay down before it the round 
sum of one billion two hundred millions of 
dollars. Would to heaven this vast sum were 
only wasted! The rich millionaire, fretted 
and groaning under the income tax, will plank 
down his share of this tax without murmur or 
complaint. The laborer, crying out against 
the government that levies upon him a paltry 
price for his civil protection, will cheat the 
hungry mouths of innocence and dependence 
170 



The Inquest. 

to pay his full share of this tyrant's levy. 
The needy toiler, in the daily throes of pov- 
erty stress, will clothe himself in rags and 
feed on a crust, that his scanty pittance may 
swell the offering. But is that all? Alas, no. 
Do you know that one hundred thousand hu- 
man beings are yearly offered to the demon 
of strong drink? That between the first day 
of January in this year up to the first day 
of January next year, one hundred thousand, 
more will lie down as sacrificial victims on the 
altar of this modern Moloch. 

my friends, these are not the figures of 
a temperance crank. I beg you to remember 
that they come from the pen of your wise 
statesmen and your learned statisticians. 
Awful as they are, you must accept them 
whether you will or not. How the flesh 
creeps, how the heart sickens, at the mon- 
strous price of so much treasure and blood ! 
But is this all? No, no, alas, no. The records 
of crime and madness are yet to be added, 
the deeds of brute passion inflamed and let 
loose to prey on innocence and dependence, to 
171 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

trample on law and order, the straining and 
snapping of those delicate chords that tie to 
our bodies the Godlike gift of reason. Turn 
to your newspapers and your jails and peni- 
tentiaries, turn to your madhouses and write 
up, if you can, the grand sum total of crime 
and madness we are yearly adding to this 
awful price. 

But my friends, the saddest of it all is, 
that somehow in the inscrutable economy of 
Providence the crudest, bitterest curse of all 
falls at last with unerring certainty on the 
heads of innocence and weakness. Who shall 
sum up for us the grand total of all the want 
and misery and despair which follow in the 
track of this destroyer! How many anxious 
wives and sorrowing mothers and heart- 
broken widows and tender, pitiful children 
are sitting to-day under the shadow of this 
curse? insatiate demon, have we not bent 
our knees in the dust before you, clothed our- 
selves in the shame of poverty and rags to 
do you service ! Have we not laid rich treas- 
ure year by year at your feet? Have we not 
172 



The Inquest. 

poured out tile blood of our fathers and sons 
and brother* on your altar? Struck down 
in your name the majesty of civil law? Have 
we not turned ourselves into brutes and 
maniacs at your bidding? Is not all this 
enough? Must we again bring to you the 
tears and broken hearts of our women? Must 
we even sell our children into the bondage 
of ignorance and want? Who shall measure 
the hunger of a mother's love robbed of her 
boy? Who can weigh the sorrow of a wife 
whose confiding trust has been cheated of all 
that can make the heart glad and the home 
happy? Who can gauge the lifelong want 
of prattling dependence defrauded of its 
birthright? 

Alas, my friends, here is a record no scale 
of sentient feeling can measure; no cold fig- 
ures of mathematics bring within the grasp 
of human comprehension. Here is a waste 
of treasure more precious than gold, a depth 
of agony more cruel than death. Here is a 
vast offering on the altar of this fell de- 
spoiler, gathered up from all the ramifica- 
173 



Bundick's Lectures. 

tions of our social system, from your hospi- 
tals and almshouses, from your cold and 
cheerless streets, from wealthy homes and 
wretched hovels, unnoticed during the busy 
day, unseen during the darkness of the night 
except by that all-pitying Eye that, looking 
down upon us, counts the hairs of our heads 
and notes even the fall of the sparrow. Hor- 
rible antithesis! 

my friends, what is wrong? I ask you 
as men of brains and women of hearts. I 
bring you no idle tale. I have told you only 
that which you already know, that which no 
man can deny. Where will you lay the blame 
for the black blot on the civilization of this 
century, the responsibility for this awful 
curse? And I beg to remind you that you 
can not lay the burden of this blame at the 
door of the abandoned drunkard. Besotted, 
bloated, cowering, an abject slave in the serv- 
ice of a brutal, tyrannical master, what is 
there about him, poor fellow, to command 
respect or incite emulation? Behold the once 
supple muscles now quivering as with ague, 
174 



The Inquest. 

the brain clouded as with maudlin torpor, the 
dirt of the street or the sawdust of the bar- 
room floor clinging to his clothing, he may 
be an object of pity, but of pity so nearly akin 
to disgust that he stands before you a warn- 
ing beacon-light marking his manhood's ruin, 
a pitiable victim that cries aloud against this 
curse. I pray you do not lay the responsi- 
bility at the door of the drunkard. And will 
you lay the guilt there too ? 

Why, my friends, has the poor, pitiable 
dupe been more to blame than you and me? 
He came into a world reeking with a moral 
miasm for which he was in no way respon- 
sible. His youth may have been hallowed by 
all the gentler influences that surround your 
boy. Maternal kisses pressed that bloated 
face when it was pure and sweet as a 
cherub's, tender love kept watch and ward 
over every budding impulse of his nature. 
Tired fingers worked themselves sore to fit 
him for an honorable career, and he went 
forth with the holy incense of a mother's 
prayers following his footsteps. But wher- 
12 175 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

ever he turned, the breath of this pestilence 
was in his nostrils. It steamed up on every 
hand, from shadowy haunts and tempting 
saloons, from gay clubrooms and cozy par- 
lors. The subtle contagion lurked in the 
circle of boon companionship, in the grasp 
of neighborly kindness, in the cup that friend- 
ship lifted to his lips. Is it strange that the 
poison touched him at last, and he fell? Poor 
mothers ! I do not wonder that, knowing all 
this, you follow your boys to the door as they 
quit the sanctuary of home and kiss them 
good-bye with aching hearts. I do not won- 
der that you hide in your closets, and weep 
and pray with an agony of dread only known 
to a mother's bosom. Who shall say they 
will thread the danger unscathed? Who shall 
say how many of them will fall victims to this 
moral leprosy, writhe for months and years 
in its grasp, and then it may be lie down in 
drunkard's graves at last? And will you lay 
the whole burden of responsibility and guilt 
at the door of the dealer? 

Nay, my friends, we have hidden behind 
176 



The Inquest. 

him too long already. Why, he is simply your 
agent, prosecuting a legitimate and honorable 
business— honorable certainly as far as law 
and popular sentiment can make it so. It 
may not appear to you and me, it may not 
even appear to the dealer himself as clean 
and pleasant as some other business, but the 
majesty of the law has thrown a sheltering 
arm about it, and dignified it with all the safe- 
guards of public recognition and protection. 
The dealer has simply seized upon a popular 
demand ; he is a servant of the people, he has 
bought the privilege and can show you the 
title to it. True, he has established another 
focus for disseminating this moral infection 
that wrecks the bodies and souls of men. im- 
poverishes children, and breaks the hearts of 
our women. But he has done it lawfully, and 
in the broad light of noon-day. And you 
know, my friends, that under the construction 
of your State law, as interpreted by some of 
your learned officials in this behalf, there has 
been found almost no place that is not suit- 
able, convenient, and appropriate for the es^ 
177 



Bundick's Lectubes. 

tablishment of the rum business. Why the 
dealer can establish his business, display his 
wares, and turn out his drunken, maddened 
blasphemers at your very door, and you have 
no remedy. You will find these poisoned foci 
of infection in the track of your boy as he 
plods his way to school. You will find them 
reeking with vulgarity by the street corners 
and roadside where your wives and daughters 
drive. You will find them squatted in close 
proximity to the door that leads to the altar 
of God, for there is no place, say some of 
your learned officials, that is not a suitable, 
convenient, and appropriate place for the 
dramshop. There are public nuisances that 
offend our eyes and nostrils, nuisances that 
insult our sense of decency, nuisances that 
threaten public health and public morals ; but 
the dramshop is not a nuisance. You may 
pray in vain for its abatement. There is no 
place, say some of your learned officials, that 
is not a suitable, convenient, and appropriate 
place for the establishment of a bar-room. 
Alas, my friends, what avails it, when now 
178 



The Inquest. 

and then our good women, with tears in their 
eyes and a Bible in their hands, close for a 
few days the doors of a dramshop? How 
brief and barren the victory! God bless our 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union! 
God help ns to get out from behind the victim 
and the dealer, to confront the awful respon- 
sibility resting upon us as citizens and as 
sober men! 

My friends, when the wretched, nameless 
mother lays her fatherless babe at the door 
of the stately mansion, and locking up the 
agony of a maternal instinct in her bosom, 
turns away from the helpless waif, she knows 
that provision has been made by the circle in 
which she moved for its maintenance and pro- 
tection, and why? Because the sin is laid at 
the circle's door, and that circle with a guilty 
conscience accepts the burden. I am here to- 
day to lay the poor, helpless drunkard at 
your feet. Kindly make way as they bring 
him in. He may smear your dress, lady; do 
not touch him. Sir, he has been in the gutter ; 
he may soil your hands ; there, lay him there, 
179 



Bundick's Lectuees. 

poor semblance of God's noblest handiwork. 
No matter whether love guards him here or 
not, no matter if for days and months and 
years no gentle hand has ministered to his 
wants or soothed his pillow. Pride, decency, 
and self-respect may have long been stran- 
gers to him. Eyes that might weep for him 
to-day have long since been dry. Friends 
that once gathered with him at the festive 
board disown him now. The whole history of 
his life, all the good and all the bad that can 
be said of him, is swallowed up in these four 
words— he died a drunkard. Cover up the 
vacant stare of those sightless eyes, scatter 
a few flowers to hide the rigid corpse-lines 
of the body, and let us gather in solemn in- 
quest over these remains. Of what did this 
man die? Will you tell me this is a case of 
suicide, of cold, deliberate self-murder ? Nay, 
my friends, do men court the breath of the 
pestilence that walketh in the noon-day? Do 
men set out with cold, deliberate, set purpose 
to end their career in drunkards' graves? 
I think not, and what if this poor fellow lying 
180 



The Inquest. 

here could have foreseen as he lifted the first 
social glass to his lips the awful culmination 
of the career to which it led, would not his 
hand have fallen palsied at his side as he 
stood back aghast and appalled as you do 
to-day? 

Alas, my friends, he is not a suicide; he 
is only a pitiable victim, a victim to the great 
moral contamination of our social atmos- 
phere, to the popular toleration of this public 
evil, to a tacit acknowledgment of the inno- 
cence and beneficence of alcoholic poison as 
a beverage. He is only one of a hundred 
thousand human beings yearly offered up in 
the unhallowed name of sumptuary rights, 
and murdered at the hand of strong drink. 
Poor fellow, and what was done to save him? 
And what was not done to save him? We do 
not see our neighbors and friends pale and 
suffer and die without stretching out a help- 
ing hand. Was no hand outstretched to him? 
Well, I doubt not that reason was time and 
again urged upon him. Perhaps some 
stronger neighbor took that hand lying here 
181 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

so cold and still, and pointing out the danger 
of the way appealed to the instincts of his 
manhood for his deliverance. But reason did 
not save him. And social organizations, and 
even the Church of God, held out aid to him. 
And once, and again perhaps, he laid hold 
upon these rallying points with a determined 
grasp of a victim fully awakened at last to 
an awful sense of his peril. But once, and 
again relapse came, and the demon of his 
thirst laid firmer hold and more withering 
touch upon him. There was an unguarded 
moment. Did the kind friends who meant to 
keep watch and ward over him forget his 
danger? Did the Church cease to pray for 
the protection of the tender lambs in its fold? 
Only God knows, but he fell, and his last es- 
tate was even tenfold worse than the first. 

Ah, my friends, temperance societies and 
the Church have saved many of these poor 
victims, and, thank God ! many more will be 
saved. But this one lying here was not saved. 
And then, perhaps, affection came in its ten- 
derest, holiest offices, and ministered with 
182 



The Inquest. 

anxious, agonizing prayers for his reforma- 
tion. It may be that wifely kisses were 
pressed on those lips even while they yet 
reeked with the fumes of a poison more nox- 
ious to her than the fever breath of the 
plague, that wifely arms twined about his 
neck in pitiful appeal when men had turned 
in loathing and disgust away from him, for, 
thank God! our wives cling to us through 
every downward phase of disease and infamy. 
It may be there are scars lying yet on that 
bloated face where a mother 's hot tears fell, 
wrung from the bosom that had so often pil- 
lowed his baby head, that the hands of little 
children toyed with the unshaven beard and 
among his unkempt locks in mute, uncon- 
scious appeal, lending the subtle influence of 
holy innocence, like the benison of an angel's 
touch, to heal the fell disease. 

And my friends, how these little hands 
find their way to our heartstrings, how by 
some mysterious, almost omnipotent influ- 
ence they lead us whom God had ordained 
should guide and lead them. And if love 
183 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

could have saved him he would not be lying 
here. And think yon, my friends, that 
through all the downward career of this poor 
victim his own inner conscience slumbered 
and slept ? That the agony of an inborn sense 
of guilt and remorse never touched his heart ? 
Did the kindly grasp of friends, the prayers 
of a broken-hearted wife, the tears of mother- 
hood, the tiny hand of dependent innocence 
awake no responsive echo within? 

friends, you who sit secure in your free- 
dom from the peril of this curse, how little 
you know of the tortures of a drunkard's con- 
science, of the bitterness of that remorse that 
feeds on the dead sea fruit of broken hopes 
and shattered resolutions. if there is a 
devil in man, there is an angel too, and surely 
this man's angel must have wrought with him 
time and again until every sentient impulse 
of his manhood cried aloud in agony. No 
mere physical pain that ever racked that poor 
frame, no fever that ever burnt in his blood, 
no thrill of tortured nerve or maddened brain 
ever brought him half the anguish that lay in 
184 



The Inquest. 

the sting of his own awakened conscience. No 
wonder that these poor victims instinctively 
fly for relief to the delirium of a drunken 
stupor, no wonder that now and then they 
search out with their own hand the inner cit- 
adel of life, and snap the silver cord that 
binds them to their misery. But even con- 
science failed him at last, and he went on to 
his doom. 

Alas, my friends, this is no mere fancy 
painting; you and I have seen it all. There 
is no pitiable phase of this man's downward 
career that is not illustrated to-day in the 
actual lives of friends and neighbors around 
us. I bring you to-day only one of the hun- 
dred thousand human beings who between 
the beginning and ending of this year will fall 
in the march of this great pestilence in spite 
of all that love and friendship and the agony 
of conscience can do to save them. Not sui- 
cides, I beg you to remember that, but the 
murdered victims of a poisoned moral sense, 
and their blood cries out against you and me 



185 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

as the blood of Abel cried out from the 
ground against his brother Cain. 

my countrymen, isn't it time we had 
gotten out from behind the victim and dupe, 
the manufacturer and dealer, to confront our 
own individual responsibility to God and hu- 
manity as citizens and as sober men? I ap- 
peal to you again as men of brains and women 
of hearts, is n't it time we had begun to drain 
the stagnant low grounds, to weed out the 
rank undergrowth, to destroy the germs of 
this dread pestilence, to let in the pure air 
and sunlight of a higher civilization? Stand- 
ing here as the ancestors of generations yet 
unborn, with this pitiable victim at our feet 
and this awful curse about us, let us hope, let 
us pray that i ' the sins of the father may not 
be transmitted to the children of the third 
and fourth generation." 

Well, sometimes those of us invested with 
the high privilege and solemn obligation of 
the American franchise are called upon to 
record ourselves on one side or the other of 
this great question. I take it that it is the 
186 



The Inquest. 

bounden duty of every good citizen to meas- 
ure up to this obligation squarely and openly, 
to meet it as an independent, high-born, self- 
conscious sovereign, answerable only to God 
and his own conscience. And so I ask. Are 
we awake to this responsibility! Have we 
duly considered the sacredness and solemnity 
of this duty? Have we considered it not as 
time-serving politicians, but as patriotic cit- 
izens; not only as men, but as fathers and 
brothers and sons and husbands? Have we 
studied this question not only in the light of 
State and national prosperity, but of home 
and fireside, as an issue that lies between vir- 
tue and vice, between progress and pauper- 
ism, between civilization and brutality? 

I appeal to you, my countrymen, of every 
party and creed, with such an issue before 
you, on which side will you elect to be re- 
corded? Perhaps I need not tell you that the 
outlook for the nation is not without distrac- 
tion. I need not tell you that the old ,>hip of 
State, in spite of the cry of good times, may 
soon be drifting God only knows where. 
187 



Bundick's Lectukes. 

Grave questions of political economy are al- 
ways pressing themselves upon us. Labor 
and capital, the interdependent and twin ele- 
ments of all progress and prosperity, are al- 
ways declaring war against each other. The 
political demagogue is usurping the states- 
man. Partisan lines drift and change until 
even the henchman loses faith in his faction 
and his leader. What is wrong? Why, you 
say that something gets out of joint in the 
principles of applied government. That here 
in this great country of overproduction and 
of trusts and of strikes, that in some sections 
grim, gaunt hunger sometimes threatens to 
stalk forth, that in the very midst of bounte- 
ous plenty the people are robbed and de- 
spoiled. 

And I appreciate, my friends, the senti- 
ment of patriotism, or philanthropy, or of 
dire necessity, which ever it may be, that uni- 
fies the masses in a desire to right the wrong, 
and arouses them to a common demand for 
some great reformation. But how will you 
meet the situation! Some of you have been 
188 



The Inquest. 

vehemently chasing the capitalist and gold- 
bug and trusts with the cry, " Lo ! here is the 
thief, throttle the despoiler. You have said 
that these were the men who were robbing 
us." It is the rich man growing richer that 
makes the poor man poorer. And the cry of 
the socialist found its echo in the savage 
breast of the anarchist. Then there has been 
another class crying for more money. They 
said that trade and labor were starving for 
a medium of exchange and reward, and they 
demanded that all the silver in and out of the 
bowels of the earth should be coined into 
money, as if thereby the pockets of all the 
people might be filled. And another class 
found the secret of prosperity lying in the 
closer protection of our industries and our 
labor. They demanded a tariff that would 
shut out the world's competition and advance 
all prices, that the government should foster 
the few and thereby enrich the many. And 
another class demanded a freer trade with 
the outside world— bolder and broader com- 
petition, a cheapening of the products and 
189 



Bundick's Lecttjkes. 

necessities of the world. And another class 
has been crying for the expansion of our 
territory, for the expenditure of more na- 
tional treasure and more national blood in the 
purchase of a broader country. And still 
another class has demanded for America, 
only for Americans. Who was right? When 
labor has put its foot on the neck of capital, 
and the wildest dream of the socialist has 
been realized, what then? Can one twin 
brother of prosperity thrive without the 
other ? And I ask in all candor, did any sane 
man believe that the free coinage of silver 
would cure all the ills of this nation? W x ould 
poverty and want be wiped out? Would 
money spring into the pockets of the people 
without toil to make it and economy to save 
it? And what did you expect from a higher 
tariff or freer trade? Are not all these reme- 
dies as old as the nation itself? And when 
the flag has been planted in all the islands of 
the sea, and new nations have been swallowed 
up into American citizenship, what then? 
Come, friends, let 's be honest with each 
190 



The Inquest. 

other. Are you honestly seeking a reform 
that will make labor remunerative, that will 
keep the burden of poverty from our shoul- 
ders, that will minimize vice and crime, that 
will make the hearts of the people glad, and 
their homes happy? And do times get hard, 
and sometimes money scarce? Well, listen. 
This nation is annually spending one billion 
two hundred millions of dollars for alcoholic 
liquors. Now, will our statesmen tell us how 
they can keep us rich and prosperous and 
happy with this annual expenditure of one 
billion two hundred millions of dollars for 
alcoholic liquors? Will some great political 
economist estimate the effects of this waste 
from the pockets of our people? Waste, did 
I say ? Would to heaven it were only a waste ! 
But what are we buying with it? The right 
to make twenty-five thousand lunatics every 
year. The right to make five hundred thou- 
sand paupers every year. The right to fill 
our jails and penitentiaries. One billion two 
hundred millions of dollars annually ex- 
pended to wreck American manhood ; to crush 
13 191 



Btjndick's Lecttjbes. 

out the energies of our people; to degrade 
and pauperize our labor ; to pollute and poi- 
son our politics ; to make orphans of our chil- 
dren, and to break the hearts of our women ! 
Which of our great political financiers are 
figuring in this one billion two hundred mil- 
lions of dollars in these grand financial esti- 
mates? They are telling us to a cent the 
monthly draft on our gold reserve, the value 
of our bonds in and out of the treasury. They 
can figure out the size, shape, and dimensions 
of the gold or silver lining to every party 
cloud. But here is a great financial estimate * 
that is beyond their calculation, or they are 
cowardly dodging it. Which? well, but 
they say, "We can't afford to cut down this 
frightful annual expenditure just now ; other 
great economic problems are pressing them- 
selves upon us." But they have been inter- 
ested in the adjustment between capital and 
labor, they could settle the tariff, they could 
fix the ratio between gold and silver, they can 
bring in the half-breeds, the savage, the 
heathen, and teach him American politics and 
192 



The Inquest. 

American customs. The grand duty of the 
hour has been to carry the flag to the utter- 
most parts of the East, and die there to up- 
hold it. That 's their argument. The people 
have been robbed and despoiled, but they 
must look for the robber in Wall Street be- 
fore they look for him in the saloon. They 
can move heaven and earth to protect the 
poor man's dinner pail, while the dramshop 
is filching his dinner. They could settle the 
ratio between the metals, though it may mat- 
ter little to a hungry wife and starving chil- 
dren whether the standard be gold or silver 
while they are paying in the currency of tears 
and blood. They dare not look into the dram- 
shop till for the waste of labor 's hard-earned 
reward. They dare not figure the grand total 
of the tax the demon of strong drink is an- 
nually levying, not only upon the men of the 
nation, but its defenseless women and chil- 
dren. They dare not attempt to settle the 
ratio between the strong arm of American 
manhood and the palsied, tottering, drunken 
wreck, between the gilded saloon and the 
193 



Buetdick's Lectuees. 

wretched hovel, between rum and bread. Is 
it any wonder, I ask yon, that in this Chris- 
tian land and with this licensed curse wind- 
ing its folds like the coils of a serpent about 
our body politic, that the God of nations 
should turn His favor away from us, and 
leave us to the doom of national disease and 
decay? 

Well, what will you do about it when on 
election day the God-given ballot of an Amer- 
ican citizen is placed in your hand, and you 
go up in the sight of man and G6d to record 
it ! What I have tried to tell you, is either the 
veriest sort of cant, the idlest sort of a tale, 
or it is a great truth as eternal as nature's 
laws and as immutable as nature's God. It 
is either right, eternally right, or it is wrong, 
eternally wrong. Which is it? Let your con- 
science answer. This great question in the 
providence of God continually pushes itself 
boldly out to confront you. And as sover- 
eign citizens of your great country, you can 
not afford, you dare not afford, to skulk the 



194 



The Inquest. 

challenge it throws down at your feet. I pray 
God that the profound occasion may impress 
you with the logic of the issue, the serious 
sense of the duty, the awful responsibility of 
the decision. 

Friends, there are occasions in the lives of 
men, even the truest and best of you, preg- 
nant with profound gravity and appalling 
moment. Occasions, it seems to me, when 
nature herself almost pauses in the intensity 
of a crisis, and angels may well hold their 
breath with eager interest. With such a mo- 
mentous issue before the good people of 
this country, I believe that such an hour and 
such an occasion have almost met, and that 
God is looking down upon us to see how many 
will bend the knee to Baal, how many will 
come up to the help of the Lord against the 
mighty. But I leave the issue with you. If 
the licensed dramshop is a curse, if it. is the 
great crime and sin of the age, if it is polit- 
ically and morally right to stamp out this 
crime and sin, how pitifully puny and insig- 



195 



Bundick's Lectures. 

nificant the little issues of any campaign as 
compared with one of temperance and pro- 
hibition! Men of all parties and all creeds, 
I call upon you, I appeal to you, I plead with 
you to meet us on this one common platform, 
The protection of American manhood, the re- 
demption of our children, the love and rever- 
ence of our women, the sanctity of our homes. 



196 



OCT 26 1904 



